The purpose of this research paper is to provide valid insights and shine on the importance of human qualifications and non-occupational soft skills in project management. The role soft skills play in project success and the importance of emphasizing and describing this particular section and including it within the context course of university education.

Occupational skills required for job success have changed dramatically in the past decade. Nowadays competitive global markets demand that workers and staff possess at least soft skills in addition to the mandatory technical skills, and that they must be able to deploy project goals and accomplish them with the available resources (Kumar and Hsiao, 2007). Most corporations expect their staff to demonstrate a mixture of occupational skills including intercultural, technical, teamwork, communicational skills and leadership behaviors currently supported by project management education (Brown and Bowen, 2009). To make education more realistic and relevant to the market demands, many universities are offering project management courses.

According to a recent study, one tech-corp. sarcastically indicated that 90% of its annual performance issues are related to soft skills such as teamwork, management, leadership and communication, with only the remaining 10 % concerned with technical qualifications (Muzio et al.,2007). El Sabaa (2001) announces that soft skills of staff managers have the biggest influence on management practices while technical skills are of no major influence here because successful projects are applied by workers using their knowledge and creativity, and not by using their techniques or hardware. One of the evolving obstacles for project managers is to control workers requiring intense use of relationship management skills (Bourne and Walker, 2004).

Belzer (2001) announced that soft skills essentially required to manage projects successfully include teamwork, communication, leadership, the ability to control pressure, problem solving, creativity and reliability (Baroudi and Pant, 2008).

As a conclusion and based on this study, knowledge gained from soft skills influence the competencies of corporations and companies as well as staff workers and employees. It could be added that soft skills are effective. And by increasing the employee’s knowledge and understanding by implementing an educational course to confront the amount of information they bare in this sector, doing so employees are better able to deploy and apply their soft skills in order to get things done from coworkers more effectively. These Intangible gains from training and education are considered equally valuable by the Corporations which are gradually shifting to adopt the concept of benefit metrics.

 

References

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Verified by: Dr.Diab (January 7, 2017)

Citation: Dr.Diab. (January 7, 2017). The Importance of soft skills in project management. Medcoi Journal of Medicine, 1(2). urn:medcoi:article15413.