Title: Soft skills needed in the ICT project management - classification and maturity level assessment

Authors: Bogdan Lent; Malgorzata Pinkowska

Addresses: Department of Economics, University of Applied Sciences, Morgartenstrasse 2c, 3014 Bern, Switzerland; Department of Management and Command, National Defense University, Al. Chru?ciela 103, 00-910 Warsaw, Poland; Faculty of Telecommunications and Electrical Engineering, University of Technology and Life Sciences, Al. S. Kaliskiego 7, 85-789 Bydgoszcz, Poland; Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Kasetsart University, 50 Phahon Yothin Rd., Bangkok 10900, Thailand ' Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Kasetsart University, 50 Phahon Yothin Rd., Bangkok 10900, Thailand

Abstract: Numerous surveys proved that people are the main cause of failure and challenges of the ICT projects. Project manager skills to handle humans are essential to success of those endeavours. In this paper, authors investigate the awareness of soft skills understanding by project management practitioners and researchers. The analysis of 234 job advertisements for project managers published in Switzerland, Poland and Thailand, displayed significant deviation of demanded skills as compared with the evaluation of 29 journal publications and 46 books on project management. Mapping of recognised skills to the human factors processes of L-Timer® project management system and assessment of skills maturity in accordance to Blooms' taxonomy explains their complexity. Same time the relatively shallow insight of practitioners and researchers into soft skills awareness is exposed.

Keywords: ICT projects; project management; critical success factors; project CSFs; soft skills; L-Timer; Bloom's taxonomy; information and communications technology; information technology; Switzerland; Poland; Thailand; skills requirements; literature review; human factors; classification; skills maturity; maturity level assessment.

DOI: 10.1504/IJASS.2012.051133

International Journal of Applied Systemic Studies, 2012 Vol.4 No.3, pp.168 - 185

Published online: 30 Aug 2014 *

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