What the Next Generation of Project Management Will Look Like

Authors: Rachel Longhurst and Woojin Choi

THE FUTURE OF THE PROJECT manager role has been hotly debated as a number of trends shift organizational dynamics:

• Gartner research has found that businesses are increasingly adopting agile development and product management models, with 44% of work now delivered through agile methods and 39% through product models.

• Traditional project management activities, such as validating requirements, maintaining scope, and measuring benefits, have become the domain of autonomous delivery teams (i.e., multidisciplinary teams accountable for business outcomes) such as scrum and fusion teams.

• Moreover, recent technological advancements—most notably, in generative AI—mean many project manager tasks, such as resource utilization tracking and business case creation, can be successfully automated.

Two popular agile reference manuals—The Scrum Guide and SAFe Reference Guide—omit the project manager role altogether.

Yet, a recent global Gartner survey suggests that project manager is actually expected to be one of the fastest-growing project management office (PMO) roles. If project managers aren’t going anywhere, how can they continue to provide value in a changing context?

Idea in Brief

Gartner surveyed 373 project management leaders to identify the “next-generation” skills—from organizational awareness to financial acumen—that have a disproportionate impact on performance. These next-generation skills are not new in and of themselves; rather, they collectively highlight the uniquely human aspects of project management that go beyond performing discrete, repetitive project management tasks.

There are also three future-focused project manager roles—the teacher, the fixer, and the orchestrator—that project managers should prepare to perform. They may need to play a mix of roles at the same time to meet the needs of different parts of the organization.

Ten Next-Generation Skills Project Managers Need

Project managers have a decisive role to play in this new environment, where autonomous delivery teams must address complex challenges, such as overcoming organizational silos, managing hidden interdependencies, and realizing cross-team efficiencies. While AI offers promising benefits for project management, machines will never be able to replicate the uniquely human aspects of the job, such as relationship building and stakeholder management.

However, traditional project-manager skills, such as project governance and project management methodology, won’t be sufficient to deliver on these changing organizational needs. Many project managers’ skills and roles will be redesigned to meet the needs of their new operating context.

To understand the skills today’s project managers need to succeed, we surveyed 373 project management leaders and identified 10 “next-generation” skills that have a disproportionate impact on performance. Project managers proficient in these skills were found to be 1.4 times more effective at achieving key business and functional outcomes. What’s more, our research found that these skills were far more impactful than organizational tenure or formal project management certifications. The next-generation skills include:

• Organizational awareness

• Data acumen

• Cross-functional collaboration

• Decision-making

• Willingness to explore and adopt new technology

• Financial acumen

• Process and framework expertise (i.e., business process improvement, agile, organizational change management, risk)

• Customer centricity

• Growth mindset

• The ability to coach and motivate their teams

Organizational awareness, cross-functional collaboration, and customer centricity are especially important in the context of agile and product-centric delivery, where the nature of work involves bridging organizational silos and delivering enterprise-wide value. For example, creating and maintaining a mobile app requires coordination across many different business units and internal functions, such as finance and supply chain, in order to provide a seamless customer experience. Project managers are at the intersection of a growing number of customers and stakeholders. As such, they must operate more strategically and with a wider purview to maximize business value.

Moreover, data acumen and digital adoption are two skills that we expect will only become more critical over time. We’ve arrived at a juncture where the rate at which organizations are amassing data and the rate of technological advancements are outpacing the average employee’s capacity to leverage them.

Three Future-Focused Project-Manager Roles

Gartner has identified three critical roles project managers can play to meet organizations’ future needs: teacher, fixer, and orchestrator. At times, project managers may need to play a mix of roles at the same time to meet the needs of different parts of the organization.

The teacher: for organizations early in their digital journey

A teacher project manager helps bolster the competencies that distributed delivery teams need to succeed. They’re particularly skilled in coaching and motivating individuals and teams; implementing project management processes and frameworks; and adopting new technologies. They also have strong communication skills that enable them to effectively coach stakeholders on a wide variety of complex concepts, such as regulatory and compliance activities.

This style of project manager is particularly valuable for organizations with product owners who are relatively immature in their role. Organizations without a strict one-to-one ratio of product owners to delivery teams can also benefit from having teacher project managers, who can more easily move across multiple teams to ensure they adopt an uncompromising focus on shared accountability and enterprise outcomes, rather than arguing over local ownership or outputs.

The fixer: for organizations seeking to boost their delivery efficiency

Organizations that need support identifying, resolving, and mitigating challenges in workflows and complex portfolios can benefit from the fixer project manager role.

Fixer project managers are adept at cross-functional collaboration, decision-making, and financial acumen. The fixer can creatively address complex problems, identify and manage risks at both a project and a cross-portfolio level, and operate in complex portfolios.

Organizations that are undergoing digital business transformation or shifting operating models can reap benefits from having a fixer project manager. So, too, can organizations with a significant amount of cross-silo dependency who see delivery execution suffering from a lack of engagement and alignment with business partners.

The orchestrator: for organizations that need improved cross-functional coordination

Enterprise digital transformation initiatives need project managers who can manage high levels of complexity and support delivery teams in a resource-constrained environment. Orchestrator project managers are true stewards of the organization’s resources and insights, ensuring that delivery of work is aligned and correctly prioritized.

Orchestrator project managers are expertly skilled at data acumen, customer centricity, and organizational awareness. They collate diverse information and insights, align it with strategic imperatives, and translate it into executable actions. The orchestrator project manager also has strong organizational awareness and cross-functional stakeholder-management skills, with specific experience operating in significantly complex portfolios, especially those with dispersed stakeholders.

The organizations that most benefit from having an orchestrator project manager focus on customer-facing initiatives. Organizations that are challenged by capacity management or resourcing decisions across silos can also gain significant advantages.

Developing project managers to exhibit a different set of skills and play new roles won’t happen overnight. To set project managers up for success in today’s environment, organizations need to invest in training and development initiatives that focus on the 10 next-generation skills.

What’s notable about the next-generation skills is not that they’re new in and of themselves; rather, it’s that they collectively highlight the uniquely human aspects of project management that go beyond performing discrete, repetitive project management tasks.

Yes, project managers still need to know how to create business cases and generate reports. However, it’s their sound judgment in decision-making—whether that involves people, data, or technology—and their ability to make an impact beyond themselves through their coaching and relationship building that truly differentiate the next-generation project manager.