Evaluation of Scientific and Practice Approaches

Majority of products and services in today’s technologically advanced and global world is developed in form of projects. ICT (information and communication technology) research and practice confirm that success of those projects depends on three equivocally relevant areas: technology, management process and people. The last, as proven in numerous surveys and research, is the main cause of failure and challenge of the ICT projects. Project manager skills to handle humans are essential to those endeavours.This paper examines trends in required soft skills for ICT project managers, reflecting state-of-the-art in the field. The skills identified in a careful survey of 219 job advertisements for ICT project managers in Switzerland, Poland and Thailand are compared with the soft skills identified in 27 journal and conference publications as well as further 46 monographs and standards on project management. For evaluation purpose authors adopted the L-Timer process based mental model of project management.Whereas science considers leadership skills and communication capabilities as most important one, practice calls for communication and leadership in reverse sequence, followed by the team management, first. The processes of Human Resource, Conflict and Self Management are underrepresented in the advertisements. While Switzerland represents weighted approach, Poland focuses on team management capability, while Thailand demands leadership qualities of prospective project managers. The cultural roots evaluation and inter-cultural differences reflected by the conclusions of this paper are further research objectives of the authors.