Closing the soft skills gap

Citation

Lee-Kelley, L. (2010), "Closing the soft skills gap", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 24 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/dlo.2010.08124cad.002

Closing the soft skills gap

Article Type: Abstracts From: Development and Learning in Organizations, Volume 24, Issue 3

Lee-Kelley L.Project Manager Today (UK), October 2009, Vol. 21 No. 10, Start page: 20, No. of pages: 2

Purpose – Reflects on how the project management profession has changed over the years. Design/methodology/approach – Discusses how projects used to be viewed as a part of operations and managed accordingly, and there was little expectation that project personnel should be appropriately trained beforehand. Suggests. however, that being a seasoned project manager does not guarantee better decisions and outcomes, and that people do not always know how to apply the learning from their experiences. Feels that the growing appetite for improved project capability is reflected in the rise in individual and corporate membership of project management associations worldwide; that to be a project manager in the twenty-first century, you will need to demonstrate professional competence which usually involves certification in the sponsor’s preferred methodology and membership of a project association; and that as projects and programmes become central to organizational and personal success, professionalization of the discipline is picking up pace. Suggests that as projects become ever more complicated, the value of a longer term, comprehensive academic programme is to help project managers to escape the cognitive trap of quick fixes.Article type: ViewpointISSN: 1366-6851Reference: 39AC415

Keywords: Career development, Professions, Project management, Training