Survey on Competencies of a Software Project Manager

Abstract

This paper is based on a large research project being undertaken to study the competencies required of Project Leaders/Managers in the Software and IT Industry. The larger research is an ongoing project which seeks to uncover the nuances of Human issues in Software Project Management and the required competencies under different situations such as traditional software development, differences in technical and business domains, implementation of ready products such ERP and CRM, Networking and IT infrastructure projects, In-house IT Project Management etc to name a few. The survey is at present limited to organisations in Mumbai but will extend across locations within India to begin with and across the globe in future. The paper relies on primary data collected through several focus group discussions held on this subject. The over 100 participants in this survey represent a wide cross-section of Project Managers and Project Leaders from various leading software, IT and user organizations in Mumbai. They represented such leading organizations as Patni, Mastek, Citicorp Group, Indusind Bank, Atos Origin, ICICI Infotech to name a few. However the information provided by them was in the form of their personal perceptions although derived from their experience in working with such organizations. This point is important since it only ensures that they were responding of their free will and to that extent making the survey more unbiased. It is equally necessary to mention that these do not represent the opinions of their organizations and a separate survey is being conducted to gather such information. This paper only reports part of the findings of this research. It focuses on the following aspects derived from the above survey: • Importance on Human skills and Competencies in Project Success • List of Competencies required for a Project Leader/Manager • Findings on Perceptions of Indian Managers/Leaders about how they measure against these competencies • Conclusions based on the above perceptual data.