Project Management – A Skill in Need

BY: Collin Quiring

Of the respondents to Computerworld’s 2015 Forecast survey, 24% stated that they were going to add more IT employees.  Just as in previous years, the number one position they were looking to hire was in the Programing/Application Development arena.  However, the second most looked for position was Project Management.  As organizations have increasingly complex projects that require IT and business knowledge, they are looking to what is often considered a “non-IT” skill set – Project Management.

In our experience with clients we are seeing more and more that while a project may be “owned” by the technology department of an organization the consequences of, and stakeholders for, those projects are increasingly not within the technology department.  The fact that coordination between the business and IT is needed has been realized for some time and has been a large reason for the Business Analyst position that many organizations maintain.

However, the coordination between the entire organization needs a level of synchronization beyond just understanding the technical and business design.  There are processes, training and methods that may need to be incorporated, or even stopped entirely and new ones put in place.

I was wondering if the desire to hire for this skill set just applied to the IT industry but it didn’t take much of a search to see that Project Managers are in high demand in many industries.  One example I found is that in the construction industry they are recovering from the recession and the top two positions being hired are for “Project Manager” and “Project Coordinator” which is then followed by specific types of laborers.

All that to say, keep your Project Management skills up and you never know what industry you might be working in next!

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