The Soft Skills (Communication) of Project Management: A View from Project Managers

Abstract

The stakeholder relationship and communication management (soft skills) are key elements of project management. The project management subject includes two significant dimensions namely as hard factors and soft factors. Hard factors are tools and techniques (budget, schedule) and soft factor is project communication management. These two factors are essential for the successful completion of goals and outcomes. This study was designed to identify the impact of project communication management skills on project managers. The research study is focused to identify soft skills (Communication) in project management. Accordingly, it is mainly based on reviews obtained from project managers who works in the different projects in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, this study investigates new methods of stakeholder management in project management and explains frequency of project communication in a project depending on stakeholder’s requirements. The qualitative method allowed the understanding and evaluation of project manager’s responses about the stakeholder management and relationships. Hence this study was mainly highlighted about the project managers’ attitudes and perception about the project communication. Accordingly, the research revealed that the successes or failure of the project depends on identifying and prioritizing stakeholder relationships, developing and implementing strategies for engaging and communicating with them. The data collection for this study was done by the key informant interview method. It provided an opportunity to build a strong relationship with ten expert project managers. Furthermore a study developed a story according to the project managers’ views and attitudes .There were eight themes emerged from the thematic analysis of transcribed interviews such as knowledge, experience, project requirements, new methods, leadership, public relations, project design and project nature .The study explored success projects are delivered through effective project communication skills analyzed from important themes such as public relations and leadership. The research was concluded that soft skills are very essential and it was mainly impact on the delivery of successful projects because skill of public relations and leadership are highly essential in being experienced and knowledgeable project manager to deliver success projects.