Lately most execs have been focused on making sure their AI projects pay off.

With good reason: The rate of failure for AI initiatives has been notoriously high.

But AI projects aren’t the only ones that need attention. In fact, CIOs and their executive colleagues should be putting that kind of focus into all IT projects, given that success on more conventional initiatives — from new software deployments to ERP implementations — is far from perfect.

Statistics vary. Some often-quoted reports about IT project failure rates of 70% date back several years, making them unreliable reflections of the landscape today. But project consultants say a good percentage of IT projects still fail, with estimates ranging from about a third to as much as high as that 70% mark.

In the Project Management Institute’s 2026 Pulse of the Profession report, researchers report that 31% of complex projects fail to achieve the full scope of their originally intended benefits.

CIOs, project leaders, researchers, and IT consultants generally define failure for an IT project as not delivering expected benefits within the expected timeframe. Failure can also mean a project doesn’t produce returns, runs so late as to be obsolete when completed, or doesn’t engage users who then shun it in response.

Why do IT projects continue to fail? Here are 12 common culprits.

1. Lack of project management expertise

Expensive and highly visible projects get the benefit of being led by professional project managers, but small and midsize projects often don’t, says Eric Bloom, executive director of the IT Management and Leadership Institute.

So those small and midsize projects are assigned to someone like a business analyst without any true training, he says. Those workers typically don’t have the expertise or experience necessary to succeed in the project manager role, nor are they given enough time to learn what it takes to manage a project or to complete the extra project management tasks.

CIOs would see higher success rates if more projects have trained project managers, Bloom says. They’re better able to corral and schedule resources, coordinate staff schedules, and get everyone moving in the same direction — and do so across multiple projects. They’re also more capable of implementing the governance needed to keep projects on target to deliver what’s expected and not let scope creep run up costs and schedules without adding additional value.

2. No alignment with business objectives

Some projects still fail because IT teams and business teams aren’t on the same page about the organization wants to achieve. The result is misalignment between the project objectives and business goals, says Shane McDaniel, CIO for the City of Seguin, Texas, and a Project Management Professional.

That’s both avoidable and fixable with communication. CIOs, their project leaders, and even team members need to cultivate strong relationships and engage in ongoing conversations where “they have the ability to raise their hand and say, ‘We have to get our heads together,’” McDaniel says.

“It boils down to communication, awareness, being proactive, and holding people accountable,” he adds. “There is a whole ecosystem around it to make that investment worthwhile.”

3. Ambiguity around measures of success

It’s impossible to succeed if success is undefined, yet executives continue to launch projects without articulating clear, concrete metrics to meet, says George Reed, CIO at auntEDNA.ai and a Project Management Professional.

Project owners must think about their future state, Reed says. “They need to ask, ‘If we were already done, what does winning look like?’”

Then project teams can determine milestones, leading indicators, and metrics to evaluate their progress and their final product. “[Project teams] need to know what needs to be true and what are the tangible benefits they need to deliver. No project should be approved if you don’t have targets for measurable results,” Reed adds.

4. Not enough scrutiny of AI outputs

Project managers and IT teams are using AI to help with scoping, scheduling, and myriad other tasks. The technology helps them move forward fast, but maybe not more accurately or as precisely as if they had done the work themselves.

That can be a problem for project success, says Te Wu, CEO and chief project officer at PMO Advisory.

“If you use AI, you get something quickly and it may look good, but the problem with AI is it can make stuff up,” Wu says.

AI tools may not introduce big errors; it might just have minor mistakes or misalignments, he explains. But if AI creates lots of those that are riddled throughout the project, then they add up and can tank the whole initiative.

“So, you have to have a sharper eye to spot issues; the reviewer has to be super diligent in reviewing it,” Wu warns.

5. Failing to work at the pace of AI

Wu has spotted another problem when project leaders bring AI into the process: It works way faster than the humans on the team.

That’s a benefit in many ways, Wu says. But as AI speeds through tasks, humans still need to run with the outputs. And if there aren’t enough people assigned at that point, work can pile up and projects fall behind schedule or need more staff than anticipated to keep up.

Wu advises project managers to adjust processes to accommodate the speed that AI introduces to avoid bottlenecks.

“This is just the reality, that we humans are too slow to review all the AI,” Wu says. “You can certainly use AI to accelerate IT project delivery, but project managers can’t then treat IT projects in the traditional ways.”

6. Mismatch between assigned resources and planned projects

There’s a long history of projects failing due to a lack of needed resources, as projects suffer delays or quality issues if the right experts aren’t available at the right time to tackle the needed work.

That under-resourcing continues to plague IT projects, says Noah Fletcher, a partner in the operations excellence practice at consultancy West Monroe.

Moreover, AI may be making the problem worse. Yes, project teams can use AI to speed through certain tasks, such as coding, and the project leaders can use AI to reduce the number of people required to handle those tasks. But business and IT execs often overestimate the time and resource savings that AI brings to a project and as a result ask for faster project delivery while assigning fewer resources. In other words, Fletcher says, people are being asked to do more with less — and often too much more with too much less.

Many organizations can indeed reduce the time and people they’re assigning to projects, Fletcher says, but they must train project teams on how to optimize their use of AI tools. Even with fully trained teams capable of optimizing their use of AI in project delivery, organizational leaders must have realistic expectations about AI’s contribution to a project’s timeline and resource needs.

7. Poor prioritization practices

Unrealistic AI expectations isn’t the only reason project teams end up with more than they can do, Fletcher says. Poor prioritization also plays a role in many organizations.

“They’re not making hard choices on what are the really critical things to drive through,” he says. “They sometimes have to make hard choices about what to push forward, but that whole prioritization governance function is something I frequently see as very ineffective.”

The result is that too many people are working on too many things, with diluted efforts leading to poor business outcomes for multiple projects.

Business and IT execs must work together to prioritize projects based on each project’s anticipated business value and then shepherd projects to completion based on that priority list — “which means cutting out a lot of the lower priorities,” Fletcher says.

8. No business ownership

Even when IT is perfectly aligned with business objectives, a project can still tank when no business leader has accountability, says Eric Stettler, a partner in the digital practice at Kearney, a global strategy and management consulting firm.

A business owner with clear accountability is needed to ensure that business resources are available when required, and that process changes and worker adoption happen, Stettler says. Having CIOs instead of a business owner try to make those happen “would be a tail-wagging-the-dog scenario,” he adds.

“CIOs can make sure the right process ownership is in place, and that leaders are aligned to a common set of objectives, but ultimately the business has to decide whether it’s going to operate differently,” Stettler adds.

9. Lack of business sponsor engagement

Business leader ownership is not enough; the owner also must commit adequate time for involvement and oversight.

Otherwise, they can miss signs that the project is going off track, or they can fail to cultivate enough trust that project leaders feel comfortable escalating issues early enough.

Moreover, if sponsors aren’t actively involved, if they’re just looking at dashboards, and only attending briefings, then all the decision-making is left on the project team who may not have all the information needed to make the best choices, says Lenka Pincot, chief of staff to the CEO at PMI.

“What is really needed is active sponsorship and help,” Pincot says. “You need someone to stand behind the idea, ensure funding for the project in the beginning and then when it’s running, to help navigate the business alignment with other stakeholders.”

There can be more than one sponsor, she adds. And if it’s a business project with an IT component — as practically all are these days, then sponsors should be the CIO and someone from the business.

10. Not involving all stakeholders

IT project manager Krista Phillips recounts one case in which a large multinational corporation implemented a new technology across its companies but caught one division completely unaware of the ongoing implementation work.

Turns out that specific division had been left out of all the planning and project processes.

Phillips acknowledges that project teams don’t usually overlook entire divisions, but they sometimes fail to identify and include all the stakeholders they should in the project process. Consequently, they miss key requirements to include, regulations to consider, and opportunities to capitalize on.

11. Slow or no decision-making mechanisms

Another issue that can put a project at risk: slow or no decision-making mechanisms.

Rick Catalano, partner with AMIGO, which provides project management consulting, training, and software, says many organizations lack a strong decision-making muscle and as a result projects grind to a halt or go off-track.

“Too often there is no one empowered to make decisions, and too often project managers are left waiting for answers and then get asked why things are late,” says Catalano, author of the book The AI Project Manager.

Catalano explains that the executives in charge and the project’s governing board need to have the authority to make decisions and the capacity to make them at a pace that aligns with the project’s timeline. But execs and project sponsors also need to empower project leaders who in turn need to empower those beneath them to make certain decisions, too.

This isn’t a project problem, Catalano says; it’s a cultural one. The C-suite must recognize that delayed or failed IT projects imperil the business and that it is worth their effort to remove roadblocks to success. From there, they need to implement a decision-making matrix, empowering the right people at the right level to make the right decisions, emphasizing the importance of making calls in a timely manner. And project leaders must know how to provide guidance so team members can quickly make informed decisions.

“Build the decision-making into the governance model, so everyone knows exactly who owns what and who is empowered to do what,” Catalano adds.

12. Shortchanging change management

Projects need more than skilled project managers; they also need leaders skilled in change. If projects don’t have skilled change managers and a plan to drive adoption of new technology, they’ll likely fall short of expectations, Fletcher says.

Given how critical technology — and particularly AI — is for business transformation today, “the impact of not having a plan is high right now,” he says. “So leaders need to demand and prioritize change.”

That makes change management particularly important now, he says, as most workers are dealing with so much change they need guidance to absorb it all.

Skilled change managers know how to align incentives to get people to accept new ways of working, and they’re deft at identifying and counteracting obstacles that could hinder adoption of new technologies, says Nick Kramer, a principal for applied solutions at consulting firm SSA & Co. They’re often able to get reluctant workers to get over their hesitations by helping them understand the why behind change.

“Change management is often viewed as just a communications plan, and there’s lip service done to it, but change management is really difficult,” Kramer adds, noting that he has seen more projects fail because of poor change management than poor technology implementations. “To succeed, projects need a CIO or someone else to be an agent of change, they need someone who knows how to drive change.”

If you’ve ever watched a PMO do everything right and still lose the room, you already know the frustrating part: it wasn’t the framework. In nearly two decades building PMOs across UAE and GCC government, energy and enterprise organizations, I’ve learned that the PMOs that get defunded are rarely the ones with weak methodology. They’re the ones led by someone the room simply stopped believing. If you’re a CIO, or you sit above a PMO watching capable people struggle to hold executive trust, the fix rarely starts where you’d expect.

I still remember exactly where I was sitting when a senior leader at a multi-billion-dollar utilities and energy group in the UAE said something that reframed how I think about PMO leadership for good. His organization had invested heavily in digital transformation — multiple programmes, real budget, dedicated teams. Yet as he spread the latest portfolio report across the table, he told me the numbers reaching him had never travelled through anyone his own board actually trusted. He had the data. He didn’t have anyone downstream who believed it.

That’s not a data problem. It’s an authority problem — and once you see it, you start noticing it everywhere.

The real diagnosis is almost always this: The leader was not ready

Not in technical skill. Not in professional knowledge. In the internal readiness that determines whether skill and knowledge actually convert into organizational trust — the readiness neuroscience now confirms shapes whether a leader is experienced as credible before they’ve said a single word. Under real pressure, the amygdala, the brain’s threat-detection centre, can override the prefrontal cortex — the seat of reasoning and composed judgement — before conscious thought catches up. That is not a character flaw. It is biology — and it is exactly why readiness has to be built deliberately, not assumed.

It’s not what you know. It’s the state you’re leading from

I once worked with a PMO Director who was, by every conventional measure, exceptional. A master’s degree in project management. Multiple professional certifications. Complex programmes delivered across three countries. And still — nobody listened. Executives politely avoided her meetings. Sponsors gave formal approval while quietly withholding the access she needed to actually drive change.

Then, after a governance meeting where her entire thirty-slide portfolio update was dismissed in ninety seconds, she asked herself the question she’d been avoiding: “Maybe the problem is me. Not in what I know. In how I’m showing up.”

She wasn’t wrong. She was mentally scattered across 15 competing priorities, physically depleted from 18 months of overwork, and emotionally reactive in exactly the conversations that determined her PMO’s future. She was doing the right things from the wrong state — and in GCC organizations, where trust is assessed continuously and non-verbally, people respond to the state, not the credentials.

She changed, deliberately, across four dimensions. Within six months, she wasn’t the same leader in the same role. She was a different leader — and the organization around her changed with her.

The SMPE framework: four dimensions, one readiness state

This is the readiness model I now build into every PMO transformation I lead — Spiritual, Mental, Physical, Emotional. Not concepts borrowed from a wellness programme. Four measurable dimensions of a leader’s capacity to earn trust under pressure:

• Spiritual. Are you clear on your purpose as a leader? Leaders with spiritual clarity lead from conviction, not compliance — and executive sponsors notice the difference.
• Mental. Can you think strategically under pressure without becoming reactive? This determines whether you can advise in the exact moment your credibility is on the line.
• Physical. Do you have the resilience to sustain high performance for the length of a transformation, not just a sprint? Governance is endurance — and heart-rate variability, a marker of how well the nervous system recovers from stress, is one of the strongest known biomarkers of that resilience.
• Emotional. Can you stay genuinely present and regulated in difficult conversations? Your emotional state reaches the room before your words do — stakeholders feel it first, through the same mirror-neuron mechanisms that let any of us unconsciously catch a leader’s stress, or their calm.

The brain decides whether to trust a leader within the first hundred milliseconds of an interaction — before the agenda opens, before a single slide is shown. SMPE readiness is what that split-second assessment is actually detecting.

Evidence from the field

Three engagements. Three sectors. One pattern.

At a national energy company in the UAE, an AED 3.67 billion transformation programme was being tracked with no way to measure its return, and the PMO was seen as overhead. The development focus was Spiritual and Mental readiness — helping the leader claim a new identity, from reporting layer to investment governance mechanism. Within sixty days of that identity shift, the sponsor relationship changed. Result: an estimated 45% improvement in portfolio ROI.

At a multi-billion-dollar utilities and energy group, the gap was Mental and Emotional — a technically excellent leader who had learned to hedge under pressure. The shift was learning to say “the data is unclear” with executive authority, instead of “I don’t know” with a disclaimer. Executive decision cycles sped up by 20–30%.

At EY MENA, commissioned to bring governance to fifteen government units across the Kingdom, full SMPE readiness was required — especially Emotional Readiness, navigating the politics of fifteen sovereign entities without losing credibility or relationships. I remember the first week vividly: a room of 15 director-generals who had already sat through two consultancies that promised transformation and delivered PowerPoint. Nobody owed me credibility. What earned it in the first ninety seconds wasn’t my CV — nobody had read it yet. It was presence. Three of those Director-Generals later told me directly that this was the moment they decided to grant access that would otherwise have taken months to earn. The EPMO went live across all fifteen units within three months.

Why this looks different in the GCC

The SMPE Framework wasn’t built in a Western consulting practice and adapted for the region — it was built here. The majlis tradition of open consultation means decisions that appear to be made by a single executive are almost always the product of conversations that happened before the meeting you attended. A recommendation met with silence isn’t a rejection — it’s a signal that consultation is still underway, and a leader who reads it as “no” damages the relationship the PMO’s credibility depends on. Reading that room correctly is a readiness skill, not a cultural instinct you either have or don’t.

From project police to strategic business partner

SMPE readiness makes one identity shift possible: from the PMO that enforces process compliance to the one that enables outcome delivery. From reporting on what happened, to advising on what to do next. From reacting to issues to anticipating them before they land on the sponsor’s desk.

That shift doesn’t come from a new template. It comes from a leader who has done the internal work — and whose presence in the room communicates it before the agenda is even opened.

The chain, rebuilt

The organization from that first conversation is a different place today. The numbers didn’t change. What changed is that they finally travelled through people who believed them — and the data backs up why that matters at scale: PMI’s own research has found that organizations with consistently engaged executive sponsors report roughly 40% more successful projects than those without. Sponsor engagement isn’t a soft metric. It’s the clearest predictor we have.

That is the work I now do with PMO and transformation leaders across the GCC — not another framework to memorize, but the readiness to walk into the room your framework has already earned. If you’ve ever watched a strong plan lose the room anyway, I’d love to hear your experience.

At the turn of the decade, Gartner predicted that by 2030, 80% of all project management tasks would be automated. It’s still too early to know whether this will be the case, but the rise of AI in the years since Gartner made this projection gives CIOs and project managers adequate food for thought. For instance, will project management aided and automated by AI create a new kind of 80-20 rule, and if so, what 20% of project management will still be performed by human project managers?

Answering that requires breaking down the key elements of project management and understanding what about them is necessarily human.

IBM offers some possible answers on balancing AI with human oversight: “[Project management] AI tools offer useful support, but they do not fully replace human judgment. Organizations must ensure proper human engagement and governance, and review AI-driven recommendations critically to ensure they’re in line with company policy and goals. Responsible implementation of AI requires communicating clearly to all stakeholders, conducting thorough risk assessments and investing in tools that adhere to best practices in data security.”

But that only scratches the surface.

The value of experience

As a veteran CIO and IT project manager, I’ve shared war stories with others in these roles, and I can confidently attest that we all agree that the biggest jobs of a project manager are communicating and making personal rounds with project stakeholders and staff members who have the potential to pull the plug or sabotage a project in an instant. A third would be making sure the information we base our decisions on is right.

Here are several examples from real-life situations:

A major computer vendor releases a new version of its operating system for its hardware and the OS crashes. The culprit: a single software module within the OS that someone forgot to compile. Would AI have drilled deeply enough and gathered enough conclusive information to see that a small module of software had not been compiled, and that it would bring the OS down? Possibly — if the vendor had skipped a QA of the module, the AI could check the project management checklist and catch that the module had not been quality-checked, for example — but we don’t really know.

A back-office order-entry manager jumps the gun and purchases a new order-entry system without consulting his staff. IT is asked to integrate and implement the system. The project drags on for over a year, with no clear cutover date in sight. Project tasks are getting checked off, but still the project doesn’t seem close. There seems to be an endless number of enhancement requests coming in from users, and many say the system will “never work.” The real culprit? Order-entry staff wasn’t included upfront in the system decision process. Is this a case of “soft” sabotage? Hard to tell — and even harder for AI to know — but an astute and experienced human project manager likely would know.

A stock brokerage system project is more than a year overdue and millions of dollars over budget. The real head-scratcher is that the project seems close to being finished because tasks have been checked off the list. The CIO gets a gut feeling that things aren’t really as they should be. He starts walking around and asking questions — not of his project manager, but of project staff members. They tell him they are still working on many of the tasks that have been represented as being complete. He confronts the project manager and discovers that the manager has been falsifying project progress because he was over his head and afraid he would lose his job. Could AI have uncovered this deception? Possibly — but AI can only operate on the data it is fed. It would likely take a real human (in this case, the CIO) to understand the project manager’s fear of failure and sense the project was having undocumented problems.

Where AI can help

Given these needs for human judgment, management, communication, and intervention, just whatcan AI do for project management?

AI can provide a natural extension for many of the forms of automation that project management software already has. Here are several key examples.

1. Plan for system dependencies. For software development projects, a plethora of mature tools can already detect what underlying IT infrastructure or systems may be impacted by a new project. Further downstream detection of underlying compatibility issues for a new application can also be uncovered during software regression testing. When added to these tools, AI will be able to deliver even more precision, and possibly even a certain amount of self-healing that can auto-solve detected incompatibilities without IT having to do it manually.

2. Plan for project task dependencies. Planning projects for task dependencies (i.e., which project tasks must be completed before others can be started) is an arduous, laborious, and often manual process. With enough information, AI can produce a “first cut” draft of the project task list and identify task dependencies. This would give IT the ability to review and revise a draft instead of having to develop it from scratch.

3. Monitor for risk. Project management software already evaluates for risk and issues risk alerts for project tasks and paths, but AI could probe deeper using additional rules the project manager defines for risk. The AI could also assist in risk mitigation by assessing a situation and making recommendations for getting a project back on track.

4. Look for talent. Companies (and IT departments) have made major strides in recent years by digitalizing employee skillsets across the enterprise. AI could review these digital repositories and identify across departments any employees who have the requisite skills to step in for a project task if the primary person assigned to the task becomes unavailable.

5. Perform project what-if scenarios. What if a vendor that is integral to your project postpones a deliverable? Or if one of your key performers leaves for other employment? This is where AI can be extremely useful in evaluating a given what-if scenario, projecting likely outcomes and assessing how to navigate them.

The upper limit of automation

Project management contains many intuitive elements that humans must decide, no matter how much automation and information AI delivers.

It is why the CIO of a European payment processor shared with me recently that he could now fully automate the failover process for his payment service, with AI even making the call to failover and then executing it — but he still insisted on being “the one to press the button.”

Perhaps over time, humans will become comfortable handing off this responsibility to AI. Until then, however, expect project management to keep a human touch.

Projects are becoming more complex, with higher stakes and faster delivery times.

At the same time automation and AI are changing how projects are designed, managed, and delivered. Indeed, some pieces of project management are now routinely handled by machines.

Some may think that AI and automation will make project managers obsolete, or at least less critical to project success. Executives say that’s not the case. Project managers are as important now as they ever were to project success.

“As we move forward, the role of project manager is actually becoming increasingly important for finding the right things to invest in, defining scope, and staying focused on value,” says Noah Fletcher, a partner in the operations excellence practice at consultancy West Monroe. “As we continue to accelerate, their value is really about quality — quality of what you’re trying to accomplish.”

That doesn’t mean that the role of project manager is static. Rather, the role is evolving, with what it takes to be successful is changing to meet the needs of the moment.

To thrive, project managers need to hone a complex combination of technical, business, and interpersonal skills. The Project Management Institute attempts to decode what it takes to be a successful project manager with its PMI Talent Triangle, comprising Ways of Working, Power Skills, and Business Acumen.

Not surprisingly, there’s a lot packed into those three areas. Effective project managers must know how to define the scope of a project, identify necessary resources, and schedule those resources — all part of the technical aspect of the job. They must also manage stakeholders and ensure projects align with business goals — skills that fall under the other two talent buckets.

As lengthy as the PMI’s list of required skills is, experienced project leaders say that’s not enough to rise to the top of the profession; highly effective project managers today bring even more to their jobs.

They’re curious, flexible, and adaptive — and they learn from and know how to right their mistakes. They’re empathetic, persuasive, and visionary. They know how to play to their own and others’ strengths.

Leading project professionals say the most successful PMs are those who know the academic parts of the job — that is, the elements that are taught — but they also bring finesse to the work.

So, what characteristics distinguish the most effective project managers? Longtime project leaders list the following key traits and skills as vital to succeeding at a high level.

1. They serve as a strategic business partner

Top-level project managers are more than good managers. They have high-level strategic leadership skills and know how their projects fit within overall strategic goals, making them well equipped to make the right decisions for the project and the organization as a whole.

“A project exists because it responds to a need of the business. That might be due to trends impacting the business or a challenge in running the business, but without understanding that, it will be hard for the project manager to deliver a successful project,” says Karla Eidem, a Project Management Professional (PMP) and PMI’s global head of transformation and project delivery.

2. They know the business

The most effective project managers aren’t just great leaders; they’re also business-savvy.

“They understand strategy and business context,” Fletcher says. As they deal with shifting resources and changing market dynamics that happen during many projects, they focus on what work will bring business value — not merely what will tick off items on a task list. “That ability to work on the right thing is one of the most important things that a project manager can have,” Fletcher adds.

3. They’re strong technologists

Projects today nearly always involve technology, making it essential to have technology skills. But standout project managers are true technologists, too.

“Increasingly IT is touching so many different area, and we’re seeing systems and architecture getting more connected, so understanding how business and operations fit together is critical,” Fletcher says.

4. They’re financially astute

Project management always involved budget management, but the task today requires more than balancing the books. It also involves understanding how projects and the core components of any given initiative bring value to the business. That takes financial acumen and the ability to make smart decisions during project execution to ensure the business sees returns on its investment.

“The best project managers know the business drivers and can get depth on how the project impacts the business financially,” Fletcher says. “They have a good value management framework, that end-to-end process that can take the business case all the way through.”

5. They possess extraordinary organizational skills

Top-notch project managers are highly organized individuals. But it’s not just about making a list and sticking with it. They understand how project plans and resources are intertwined with other goings-on within the organization. That organizational capacity enables them to adjust their plans and resources when needed.

Lenka Pincot, chief of staff to the CEO at PMI, says today’s top-notch project managers are “orchestrators” who can pull together the complex components of modern projects and get them to work in harmony.

“Organizations need orchestrators who can synchronize all the changes happening so the results all make sense,” she says. She notes that orchestration takes systems thinking as well as the ability to identify and plan for unintended consequences.

6. They’re problem-solvers

The best project managers are good at delving into and solving for the “why” behind projects.

“They enjoy problem-solving,” Pincot says. “[As project managers], we’re not handed projects; we are handed problems to solve. So we need to get to the bottom of what’s not working. We need to ask questions and really listen for what someone’s true interests are.”

7. They thrive in fast-paced environments

Executives constantly talk about the speed of change today. Teams must work fast to keep up with shifting technology and business contexts, and project managers must be able to facilitate that, Fletcher says.

“The ability to quickly identify the right tools, assign the right resources, accelerate testing, and to move things forward fast without compromising quality is a huge thing today,” he adds.

8. They are flexible

Similarly, highly effective project managers are flexible, so they themselves aren’t flummoxed when project plans need adjustments — something that happens increasingly more often in the modern digital world.

“Adaptability is huge,” says Krista Phillips, a PMP holder and project management consultant. “Things are always going to change, priorities adjust, resources adjust, timelines change. Project managers must be able to successfully manage all that.”

9. They are persuasive

Project managers typically manage teams but aren’t the boss of any of them, meaning they must be capable of leading and workers without having to lean on any official authority, explains Julie Butcher, a fractional CIO work and transformation principal consultant with Butte Information Group. The best project managers are masters of this skill.

10. They have ‘extreme awareness’

Barry Cousins, a distinguished analyst and research fellow specializing in project portfolio management, project management, and organizational change management at Info-Tech Research Group, says top project managers possess what he calls “extreme awareness of resource capacity and utilization.”

“Savvy project managers in the modern era have immediate implicit awareness of the capacity around them, so then they’re going to know right off the bat when their projects are going to fall short,” Cousin adds. Furthermore, they’re more comfortable alerting business leaders to that situation because they’re able to quantify the shortfall.

Others agree, saying this all speaks to the need for project managers to have strong emotional intelligence.

11. They have highly tuned stakeholder management skills

Project managers work with numerous stakeholders from various departments within and outside their organizations, and those who manage those relationships best understand each stakeholder’s perspectives, say Te Wu, CEO and chief project officer at PMO Advisory.

Wu adds that stakeholders can now also include AI agents.

For example, some stakeholders may be more risk adverse than others, or more resistant to change, or more prone to panic when problems arise.

Veteran project leaders say managers who can identify and empathize with those perspectives can tailor their communications, plans, and training to address each stakeholder’s unique points of view.

12. They understand who has authority

Organizations today have distributed authority, so project managers must know who has say over what pieces — whether they’re dealing with 10 IT architects who each control a piece of the IT environment or 10 executives who have responsibilities for separate areas of the enterprise impacted by a project.

“The savvy project manager knows to give them all room to succeed,” Cousins explains. That means staying on top of what each person’s realm of authority needs for the project to succeed, identifying who has ownership for what pieces, and knowing which person has true authority and can get others to line up behind him or her.

“It often requires getting to know people who are at a layer of the company that you don’t play in,” Cousins says.

13. They can navigate office politics

In addition to being good at stakeholder management, elite project managers also know how to navigate office politics. That means navigating not only individual stakeholder’s needs and expectations but also understanding how those stakeholders interact with each other, who has influence over the others, and who has power to override the authority of others.

“They know when to apply what type of pressure to get something accomplished,” Wu adds.

14. They’re decisive

Given the speed, complexity and fluidity of project work today, project managers must be critical thinkers and decisive decision-makers. Otherwise, they risk falling into analysis-paralysis and bringing work to a halt.

Varun Bijlani, global managing partner for solutions and delivery at IBM Consulting, says the best project managers can confidently and consistently make good calls even in the face of ambiguity.

“IT projects are rife with it, even though everyone walks in expecting full clarity and specificity: requirements shift, priorities compete, expectations are unclear, unplanned technical issues arise,” he says. “AI can surface options and synthesize information fast, but it can’t apply the contextual judgment, reasoning, and organizational awareness needed to weigh trade-offs and commit to a direction when the path isn’t clear. That’s still a human call.”

15. They communicate effectively

Considering communication plays a significant role in managing projects, teams, and other stakeholders, it is one of the essential skills for effective project managers, according to longtime project managers.

Communication doesn’t just mean being a stellar facilitator, speaker, or writer; it requires good listening skills, too. As such, top managers actively listen to what’s said — and not said — and can take context into account.

These skills enable project managers to synthesize information and then clearly and concisely sharing that information back with all those involved, Pincot explains.

“They have to be able to translate business needs to technology teams and explain how technology creates value for the business so that everyone can understand and trust that information,” she adds.

16. They build community

“I believe the ‘P’ in PM is for the people: You can’t do a project without a team. And the team might not report to the project manager, so you have to have collaborative leadership, problem-solving, and communication skills to activate your team. Without that you can’t really move the needle,” Eidem says. “But in a project, you’re working with people who might have different priorities and different understanding of the goals of the project, so it’s the project manager’s responsibility to make sure everyone is aligned and knows where they’re going.”

Butcher agrees, saying that the best project managers know how to build a sense of community among the teams as well as with the workers on the periphery of projects so that everyone is willing to work toward a shared objective.

17. They build rapport

Top project managers are also skilled at developing strong rapport with those around them — even for short-lived projects — knowing that good connections and solid relationships lead to success.

“When you build rapport, there’s a shared understanding,” Phillips says. That shared understanding pays dividends. Project managers who take time to build up relationships are more likely to have others share information that could impact their projects, and they’re more likely to get help from others if they make difficult requests — such as staying late or coming in on a weekend to catch up.

18. They’re confident leaders

According to Wu, effective project managers must possess confidence.

“They have a can-do attitude, and that attitude needs to be a bit infectious,” he says. “They don’t have the be cheerleaders, but they do have to have a mindset that sees what’s possible and not just the issues and what’s at risk.”

That allows them to present an optimistic attitude that can propel teams forward even during difficult stretches, Butcher adds. Project managers who possess such confidence are those with a track record of success and are competent in foundational project management skills such as planning and team-building, she says.

19. They serve as change agents

Change is inevitable and can be highly disruptive to all areas of business and personal life; project management is no exception. Highly effective project managers understand this, embrace it, and build elements of uncertainty into their project plans. They also recognize the need to work closely with change management experts to help stakeholders adapt to change and better prepare for the future state of things.

20. They possess an even-keeled demeanor

Even well-planned projects run into problems, and even highly skilled project managers can hit significant setbacks. But the best project managers don’t display panic, anger, or despair even under pressure; they keep their cool.

“Projects can create a lot of pressure, and there can be seemingly conflicting priorities, so staying calm is an essential trait for project managers,” Pincot says.

More on project management:

• Top 20 project management methodologies
• Project management guide: Tips, strategies, best practices
• What is a project manager? The lead role for project success
• Top 15 project management certifications
• 7 must-have project management skills