Preparing project managers for digitalisation: Identifying critical skills and learning pathways for the digital era

Project management digitalisation impacts various levels including project management processes, the deliverable itself of the project and the required skills and skill sets of the project manager and the team members. Various authors have highlighted the need for project managers and teams to upskill, focusing specifically on data and artificial intelligence skills. It is not evident how project managers must upskill and to what extent they need to do so. Through the lens of Human Capital Theory, 20 digital transformation projects were analysed to determine the types of technologies used, the skills required to adopt and integrate technologies and how these skills were acquired. The results indicate ten groupings of technologies that are used, ranging from collaboration and documentation to data analytics and business intelligence. The results indicate that there is a shift from technical skills to analytical and digital skills. These skills are acquired typically through on-the-job training and informal learning. A case is made that formal continuous professional development and co-learning should be adopted as learning strategies to acquire analytical and digital skills. From a theoretical perspective, the literature is extended by organising the required skills into project management skill sets and showing that project management digitalisation changes established skill sets rather than replacing them. Human Capital Theory highlights project management digitalisation’s impact on human capital content and development. The content perspective highlights the skill sets needed for digitalisation, while the development perspective emphasises various pathways for acquiring these skills. From a practical perspective, preparing project managers and teams for digitalisation requires alignment among project functionality, technology-related skill requirements and appropriate learning pathways.