International Journal of Project Management 19 (2001) 17

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The skills and career path of an eective project manager

S. El-Sabaa
The American University in Cairo, Department of Management, P.O. Box 2511, Cairo 11511, Egypt
Received 1 December 1998; received in revised form 13 April 1999; accepted 12 May 1999

Abstract
This paper evaluates how project managers and functional managers dier with respect to the attributes, skills and experiences
they associate with successful management performance and careers. Instruments to evaluate these dierences were based in part on
responses to open ended questions of project managers, and in part on the management literature. On the basis of these two sources
(the literature and the data), this paper concludes with a conceptual framework for enhancing the selection and performance of
eective project managers, and oers suggestions for those whose careers are likely to emphasize assignments to projects that
require crossing functional and technical conventions. The ndings of this paper show that the selection and training of project
managers could be conducted with greater reliability. # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
In projects, crisis, uncertainty and suspense are continually recurring to test the quality of project managers. They always face the challenges of guring out
what to do with the implementation of their projects,
despite uncertainty, great diversity and an enormous
amount of potentially relevant information. Project
managers try to get things done through a large and
diverse set of people despite having little direct control
over most of them.
Knowing what project managers do, what kind of
skills they demonstrate and what is their career path,
would seem to constitute a very important step for the
selection and development of an eective manager who
is equipped to cope with any problem and accomplish
unique outcomes with limited resources within critical
time constraints.
Meredith et al. [12] categorized the skills needed for a
project manager into six skill areas: communication,
organizational, team building, leadership, coping, and
technological skills. Katz [9] suggested that eective
administration rests on three basic developable skills.
These are human skill, conceptual skill and technical
skill. Although these skills are interrelated, they can be
E-mail address: elsabaa@aucegypt.edu (Dr. S. El-Sabaa).

developed independently. Allen et al., Allrid et al.,

Drucker, Ford and Mclaughin, Luthans, and Patterson
[1,2,6,7,10,11,13], all studied the personality traits of
ideal managers to direct attention towards a more useful
question: what observable skills does an eective manager demonstrate?
There is surprisingly little agreement among educators
and training program directors of many leading universities and institutions on what makes a good project
manager. For example, at the American University in
Cairo, project management programs at the Engineering School, at the Business School, at the Institute of
Management Development and at the Center of Adult
and Continuing Education reect tremendous variations in objectives and contents.
In this paper, Katz's approach was modied to study
the skills and career path of the `ideal project manager'
as perceived in Egypt.
1.1. Human skill
This skill is used to connate the ability of a project
manager to work eectively as a group member and to
build a cooperative eort within the team he leads. This
skill is demonstrated in the way the project manager
perceives and recognizes the attitudes of his superiors,
equals, subordinates and the way he accordingly
behaves. So, human skill is primarily concerned with

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S. El-Sabaa / International Journal of Project Management 19 (2001) 17

working with people. A project manager with a highly

developed human skill is suciently sensitive to the
needs and motivations of others in his project. He is
skillful in communicating with others, in their own
contexts, what he means by his behavior.
According to Katz [9], an eective administrator must
develop his own personal point of view toward human
activity, so that he would: (a) recognize the feelings and
sentiments which he brings into a situation; (b) have
an attitude about his own experiences which will enable
him to re-evaluate and learn from them; (c) develop
ability in understanding what others, by their actions
and words (explicitly or implicitly), are trying to communicate to him; and (d) develop ability in successfully
communicating his ideas and attitudes to others.
1.2. Conceptual and organizational skill:
This skill is used in this paper to connate the ability of
a project manager to envision the project as a whole. It
includes recognizing how the various functions of a
project depend on one another, and how changes in any
single part could aect all the other parts.
It extends to visualizing the relationship of an individual project to the parent organization. Recognizing
these relationships and perceiving the signicant elements in any situation, the project manager should then
be able to act in a way that advances the over-all welfare
of the project and the parent organization.
Conceptual skill is what Chester I. Barnard [15], former president of the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company, is implying when he says:
``. . .the essential aspect of the (executive) process is
the sensing of the organization as a whole and of
the total situation relevant to it''.
For a project manager to have clarity of goals and
sound planning, he or she should try to perceive the
general environment and have a clear vision of the
totality of his or her project. In other words, the
conceptual skill and the organizational skill are interrelated.
1.3. Technical skill
As used in this paper, technical skill implies an
understanding of, and prociency in, a specic kind of
activity, particularly one that involves methods, processes, procedures or techniques. Successful project
managers should have relevant experience or knowledge
of the technology required by the project they manage.
Technical skill involves specialized knowledge and analytical ability in the use of the tools and techniques of
the specic discipline, e.g., construction engineering or
information systems.

1.4. Project manager career path

A career is an evolving sequence of work activities
and positions that individuals experience over time as
well as the associated attitudes, knowledge and skills
they develop throughout their life. Jones [8] concluded
that three elements are important in fully understanding
the meaning of a career. First, a career involves moving
on a path over time. Second, a career involves the
interactions of the individual and organizational factors. Third, a career provides an occupational identity.
Holland and Schein [8] dene the job and situational
factors that t each career orientation and increase the
likelihood of an individual's attraction, retention, sense
of competence, and satisfaction in a given work environment.
Holland documented six distinct patterns of career
orientation: conventional, artistic, realistic, social,
enterprising, and investigative.
Managerial positions of accountancy and nance
require the precise organization and evaluations of
numerical information in a fairly stable work setting
with clear operating procedures, t managers with a
conventional orientation. These functional managers
are typically conforming, orderly, ecient and less exible.
On the other hand, those managers with a social
orientation prefer activities that involve informing,
helping or developing others and dislike well ordered
and routine work environments. According to Meredith
et al. [12], Project Managers are often sociable, tactful,
friendly, understanding and helpful. They focus their
energies on leading others to reach specic project
objectives. Self-condent, ambitious, energetic and
communicative are the characteristics of a good project
manager.
Brousseau et al., [5] documented four other distinct
patterns of career orientation: spiral, expert, linear and
transitory.
According to Brousseau, the spiral career is one in
which a person makes periodic major moves across
occupational areas, specialties or disciplines. The ideal
spiral move is from one area (e.g., engineering) to an
allied area (e.g., product development). The new eld
draws on knowledge and skills developed in the old
eld, and with the passage of time, it opens the door to
the development of an entirely new set of knowledge
and skills. Spirals are driven by numerous motives to
their careers. Chief among them are personal development and creativity.
On the other hand, based on Brousseau's approach,
the ideal linear career consists of a progressive series of
steps upward in a hierarchy of positions of everincreasing authority and responsibility. Functional
managers (e.g., accounting and nancial managers), are
people with strong linear career orientation who are

S. El-Sabaa / International Journal of Project Management 19 (2001) 17

motivated by opportunities to make important things

happen in their quest for power and achievement.
Brousseau argues that the expert career is one involving lifelong commitment to some occupational eld or
specialty. Once the career choice has been made, the
individual focuses on further developing and rening his
or her knowledge and skills within that specialty. People
with strong expert career concepts know clearly that
what they desire most in their careers is expertise or
technical competence, security and stability.
Brousseau describes the transitory career as the least
traditional. The ideal transitory career is one in which a
person moves from one eld or job to a very dierent or
wholly unrelated eld or job. People who intentionally
pursue transitory careers often do not think of themselves as actually having careers. They are seeking variety and independence.
The above four career concepts basically dier in
terms of direction and frequency of movement within
and across dierent kinds of work over time. Distinctly
dierent sets of motives and career management underlie each of the four career concepts.
In this paper the researcher builds on this line of literature and provides empirical ndings of what makes a
good project manager. He develops a conceptual framework based on a synthesis of existing literature and
statistical evidence of the skills and career path of the
eective project manager and how they are dierent
from those of a functional manager. He argues that a
project manager makes periodic major moves across
occupational areas and has distinct key competence and
career motives. Chief among them are creativity, personal development and self governance.
2. The conceptual framework
The conceptual framework of this study was developed
in three stages. In the rst stage, 85 project managers
from a variety of public and private sector organizations
were asked open-ended questions. They were asked to
describe the personal characteristics, traits and skills of
the best project manager they knew of.
Based on a modied approach of Katz [9], the information about the skills of the best manager could be
clustered into three main categories. These are: human
skill, conceptual and organizational skill, and technical
skill. As shown in Table 1, each main category is composed of dierent skill items that `the best' project
mangers possess.
In the second stage, a questionnaire was developed
based on the above-mentioned 18 skill items. Each item
had a scale ranging from one to seven. A score of seven
represented the most important skill and a score of one
represented the least important skill. One hundred and
twenty-six project managers were asked to ll in the

questionnaire. The sample was selected in fairly equal

proportions from three sectors: information systems
projects, electricity projects, and agricultural projects.
As shown in Table 1 and Table 2, the raw scores
obtained from answering the 18 questions covering the
main three categories were converted into percentile
scores based on the method developed by Pinto [14].
In the third stage, a questionnaire was developed to
collect information about the career path of both the
project manager and the functional manager. The functional manager was dened as a person in charge of one
of the functional departments of a rm such as
accounting, nance, or production. The same 126 project managers who lled the second questionnaire were
asked to ll a third one. In addition, 94 functional
managers from a variety of public and private sectors
were asked to ll the same questionnaire, i.e., the third
one.
The mobility along the career path was operationalized by the number of lateral movements across
projects and rms as well as the number of vertical
movements along the hierarchy of rms. Stability was
operationalized by the average duration a manager
stayed in one eld or rm. Responses about questions
of key competence and career motives were content
analyzed resulting in both qualitative assessments and
quantitative information.
3. Results
3.1. Project manager skills
The raw scores obtained from 126 respondents of the
second questionnaire were summarized into three skill
areas as shown in Table 1. Each area contained several
critical factors. Based on Pinto's [14] method, the percentile scores of the three main skills of all sectors is
shown in Fig. 1. Human skill with a percentile score of
85.3% represented the most essential project manager
skill. Characteristics included in this category were
mobilization, communication, coping with situations,
delegation of authority, political sensitivity, high-self
esteem and enthusiasm. Conceptual and organizational
skill with a percentile score of 79.6% represented a second essential project manager skill. Characteristics
included in this category were skills of planning, organizing, having strong goal orientation, ability to see the
project as a whole, ability to visualize the relationship of
the individual project to the industry and the community, and strong problem orientation.
Technical skill with a percentile score of 50.46%
represented, relatively, the least essential project manager skill. Characteristics included specialized knowledge in the use of tools and techniques, project
knowledge, understanding methods, process and proce-

S. El-Sabaa / International Journal of Project Management 19 (2001) 17

Table 1
Project manager skills
Rating of importance
Skill type

I. Human skill:
Mobilizing: Project manager is able to mobilize the mental and emotional energy of his subordinate
Communication: Project manager is able to listen, persuade, and understand what others mean by their
behavior
Coping with situations: Project manager is exible, patient, and persistent
Delegating Authority: Project manager is able to give people the opportunity as group members to participate
in making decisions
Political sensitivity
High self-esteem
Enthusiasm
II. Conceptual and organizational skill:
Planning
Organizing
Strong goal orientation
Ability to see the project as a whole
Ability to visualize the relationship of the project to the industry and the community
Strong problem orientation
II. Technical skill:
Special knowledge in the use of tools and techniques
Project knowledge
Understanding methods, processes, and procedures
Technology required
Skills in the use of computer

1
2

dures, the technology required, and skill in the use of

computer.
As shown in Fig. 2, no signicant variations in the
prole of project manager skills among the three sectors
covered by the study were observed. In each sector,
human skill represented the most essential project manager skill and technical skill represented the least essential project manager skill.
3.2. Project manager career path versus functional
manager career path
The collected data from the third questionnaire were
content analyzed and then summarized as shown in
Table 3. The participants pointed out that there was a
sharp contrast between the proles of `Project Man-

26
27
31
24
25

5
7

26
20

47
45

46
54

5
8

25
21

47
44

49
51

2
5
7

8
29
13

25
29
33

39
34
40

48
28
33

4
3
6
11
3

16
13
20
21
21
20

40
45
40
44
35
44

44
45
44
40
45
44

22
23
12
15
14
15

37
37
37
36
35

38
37
34
36
37

21
21
20
21
22

3
4
4
7
7

agers' and that of `Functional Managers'. These proles

included: average age, mobility, stability, career
motives, key competencies, reward system and career
management. Results showed that project managers are
generally younger than functional managers. In addition, the respondents mentioned that project managers
have greater mobility across projects and rms and less
stability, i.e., maintaining a position, as compared with
functional managers. The respondents also mentioned
that career motives for project managers included
teamwork, creativity, people development and crosstraining. The career of a project manager was characterized by self-governance, while that of a functional manager by being paternalistic. Project managers were
assuming greater responsibility for planning their career
moves and identifying the steps required to achieve them.

Table 2
The percentile score of the three main project manager skills

Number of respondents
I.
Human skill
II.
Conceptual and organizational skill
III. Technical skill

Agricultural projects

Electricity projects

Information systems projects

Average percentile score

43
85.6%
77%
48.4%

42
84.4%
82.9%
50.5%

41
85.9%
78.9%
52.5%

85.3%
79.6%
50.46%

S. El-Sabaa / International Journal of Project Management 19 (2001) 17

Fig. 1. Relative importance of project manager skills for all sectors.

Fig. 2. Relative importance of project manager skills in each sector.

S. El-Sabaa / International Journal of Project Management 19 (2001) 17

Table 3
Project manager career path versus functional manager career path
Project manager

Functional manager

35.5 years

42.25 years

5.1

2.3

6.8

2.1

6.3

4.5
20 years
Knowledge-based technical specialty (92%)

Career motives

4.3 years
Collaborative and self-governance
(93%)
Communications (91.5%)
Skill diversity (84%)
Team work (92%)

Career management

Creativity (90.5%)
Cross-training (83.5%)
Self-managed (86.5%)

Average age
Mobility
Average number of movements from one organization to
another
Average number of lateral movements across projects
and rms
Average number of vertical movements along the
hierarchy of rms and project
Stability
Duration of stay in one eld
Key competencies

Reward system

Bonuses (85%)
Job rotation (90.5%)
Cross-training (88%)

4. Conclusion
This study sheds light on the question of attributes
and skills of an eective project manager. The nding
showed that human skills of project managers have the
greatest inuence on project management practices. On
the other hand, the technical skills, relatively speaking,
have the least inuence.
There is a dierence between the career path of a
project manager and that of a functional manager. In
this respect, the outlook of a good project manager differs sharply from that of the functional manager. Both
roles require resourcefulness. However, a project manager is required to have an extensive cross-functional
experience. He needs a basic understanding of other
functions' paradigms, so that multi-disciplinary resources can be eciently utilized.
Project managers have to take personal control over
their careers by becoming more versatile in their skills,
accepting change, and being active in shaping their life
at work. Project managers who are able to develop the
knowledge and skills described in this paper would
position themselves for future career success.

[2]
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Eciency and accuracy (87.5%)

Stability orientation (maintaining a position)
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Leadership (90%)
Paternalistic (regulated by organization)
(88.6%)
Promotion (96%)
Bonuses (91%)

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Further reading
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Salah El-Sabaa is an assistant professor at the Management Department, The American University in
Cairo (AUC). He teaches Project
Management and Business Economics
courses. He received his PhD from the
University of Southern California, his
MPA from Harvard University and his
MBA from AUC. He worked as a
program specialist for the United
States Agency for International
Development (USAID) and as a
senior technical advisor to the Cabinet
of Egypt. His research interests are
Project Management and Development Planning.