The project profession is facing its most significant evolution in a generation. Economic uncertainty, technological disruption and rising complexity are changing not only how projects are delivered, but what organisations need from the people who lead them.
Project management is no longer simply a technical discipline concerned with time, cost and quality, and increasingly, project professionals are being asked to help organisations realise strategic outcomes: transformation, resilience, productivity and long-term value. That requires a broader and deeper skill set than many organisations have historically planned for.
An inaugural survey* based on responses from 2,374 project professionals, provides a timely benchmark of the profession’s skills landscape. It shows a community confident in foundational competences such as communication, stakeholder engagement, leadership and risk management. Indeed, communication and stakeholder management were the most commonly identified important skills, and leadership was also ranked among the most important competences for successful project delivery.
But the findings also raise an important question: are we mistaking confidence in familiar skills for readiness for a different world? Communication in today’s project environment is not just status reporting. It is the ability to influence at senior levels, interpret complex stakeholder landscapes and explain how delivery decisions connect to organisational purpose.
From delivery skills to strategic capability
That is why the skills gap revealed by the Skills Survey should be a boardroom and HR priority. More than half (54%) of respondents said their organisation is concerned about whether its current project community has the required skills to deliver projects successfully, while 67% admitted to having a gap in their own current skills. The most commonly cited organisational gap was project management fundamentals, but the broader picture is one of dispersed capability pressure across stakeholder management, technical expertise, planning, risk, leadership, digital skills, capacity and commercial management.
This matters because projects are becoming more strategic. Organisations cannot rely on project teams to deliver assets alone; they need people who can deliver outcomes. Benefits management, sustainability, capability development and transition management were among the weakest competences reported in the survey. These are precisely the areas that help connect project activity with long-term organisational value.
The challenge for employers is therefore not simply to close immediate skills gaps, but to create the conditions for professional growth. Our survey suggests that while competence is widespread, true expertise is much less common, with only around one in ten project professionals rating themselves as expert in most categories. That should prompt organisations to ask whether they are investing sufficiently in mastery, judgement and professional standards.
This is especially important because many project professionals still develop their skills informally. The findings show that 59% of respondents said they learned their day-to-day skills on the job, while far fewer cited external qualifications, external training or internal courses. Experience is invaluable, but it can also be uneven. Structured development, recognised qualifications and clear CPD pathways help create consistency, assurance and confidence – for individuals and for the organisations that depend on them.
AI raises the stakes for human expertise
AI adds urgency to this agenda. The survey found that 88% of respondents believe AI skills will be important to them over the next five years, and only 3% viewed AI skills as unimportant. Project teams see clear opportunities in generative AI, predictive analytics, resource optimisation, machine learning for risk management and intelligent automation.
Yet AI should not be seen as a substitute for professional judgement. As technology takes on more routine coordination, project professionals will need to become better at interpreting insight, testing assumptions, managing ethical risk and maintaining trust. The most valuable skills may be the most human ones: curiosity, emotional intelligence, negotiation, strategic communication and the courage to challenge when a model or a plan appears to be leading an organisation in the wrong direction.
Workforce planning for the future cannot treat technical training, leadership development and professional standards as separate agendas. They need to be integrated. Organisations should map project capability against strategic goals, identify where skills are strongest and weakest, and create development routes that help people progress from basic competence to confident expertise.
This is not only a project management issue. It is a talent, productivity and organisational resilience issue. In a fast-moving landscape, the organisations that succeed will be those that invest in people as deliberately as they invest in technology. By developing deep expertise, encouraging continuous learning and strengthening the human capabilities AI cannot replicate, employers can ensure their projects deliver not just outputs, but lasting value.
*PM Project Management Skills Survey 2026,
