What is the PMI Talent Triangle?

Well, the short answer to the question from the title is… another question: “What makes an excellent project manager?” In other words: “What are the skills and requirements for acting as a great professional project manager?”

In order to answer these questions, let’s go back in time for a bit:

A short history of the PMI Talent Triangle

The skillset needed for an excellent project started to be answered in a more familiar, formal way, only in the PMBOK? Guide Fifth Edition, in 2013. At that time, the sub-chapter “1.7.1 Responsibilities and Competencies of the Project Manager” pointed out three major competencies:

• Knowledge — Refers to what the project manager knows about project management.
• Performance — Refers to what the project manager is able to do or accomplish while applying his or her project management knowledge.
• Personal — Refers to how the project manager behaves when performing the project or related activity. Personal effectiveness encompasses attitudes, core personality characteristics, and leadership, which provides the ability to guide the project team while achieving project objectives and balancing the project constraints.

Note that there is a thin reference attitude, core personality characteristics and leadership. However, in the next sub-chapter “1.7.2 Interpersonal Skills of a Project Manager”, we have a list of 11 soft skills of a project manager, among which we find leadership, team building, motivation, coaching, etc.

?Four years later, in PMBOK? Guide Sixth Edition, we already have an entire chapter dedicated to the profile of an excellent Project Manager. The chapter “3.4 Project manager Competences” describe in 10 pages the skills and knowledge needed to perform as a project manager. The summary of this information is called for the first time “PMI Talent Triangle?”. The talent triangle focuses on three key skill sets:

• Technical project management. The knowledge, skills, and behaviours related to specific domains of project, program, and portfolio management. The technical aspects of performing one’s role. For example, carrying out the processes of Risk Management.
• Leadership. The knowledge, skills, and behaviours needed to guide, motivate, and direct a team, to help an organization achieve its business goals. Is about guiding and motivating others, so that they understand the vision for the project and carry out the work. For example, dealing with conflicts, brainstorming, influencing, team building, etc.
• Strategic and business management. The knowledge of and expertise in the industry and organization that enhanced performance and better delivers business outcomes. For example, understanding legal and regulatory compliance, health and safety specific to the industry, customer satisfaction, etc

?Now we recognize three pillars of knowledge, skills and abilities: The project management knowledge of processes and practices, the ability to understand the business and the strategy of the performing organization (and of its industry) and finally, a generous set of soft skills which should help the project manager to lead the team that perform the work of the project, as well as to manage the stakeholders involved.

In 2021, PMBOK? Guide Seventh Edition was released. For many Project Managers, this was a turning point for what meant using the PMBOK? Guide as a prescriptive way of doing project management. Instead of processes with inputs, outputs and tools & techniques, this edition came with domains and principles, far less prescriptive. This meant that the narrow guide of how to do things was no longer the solid foundation they were used to have. Among such big changes, the absence of the PMI Talent Triangle? was not easy to notice. However, this was not the end of the PMI Talent Triangle?, but merely the beginning of a new age for this concept.

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The transformation of the PMI Talent Triangle?

As mentioned before, the PMI Talent Triangle? did not disappear in the PMBOK? Guide Seventh Edition and in The Standard for Project Management. Actually, the new structure of these two documents became the definition of what an excellent project manager should be like. The principles embedded in The Standard for Project Management spoke about being a diligent, respectful, and caring steward. Also speaks about creating collaborative environment for the team be focused on value, enable changes and so on. Similarly, The PMBOK? Guide spoke about a more “technical” part of the project manager’s knowledge, such as the ways of working, delivering value and overcoming uncertainty.

However, there is another place were PMI Talent Triangle? was used in a more practical way:

?Continuing Certification Requirements System (CCRS)

PMI Talent Triangle? became a very useful tool in the Continuing Certification Requirements System (CCRS). This is the system that make sure that all the people certified by PMI continually strive to be better, by learning and keeping up to date with the evolving needs of their profession. So, the education component of the CCR program is aligned with the PMI Talent Triangle to ensure you are equipped to remain relevant in a continually changing business environment. Here are the new denominations for the new triangle:

• Ways of Working: It’s clear that there is more than one way that work gets done today. We encourage mastering as many ways of working as possible — so you can apply the right technique at the right time, delivering winning results.
• Power Skills: These interpersonal skills include collaborative leadership, communication, an innovative mindset, for-purpose orientation, and empathy. Ensuring teams have these skills allows them to maintain influence with a variety of stakeholders—a critical component for making change.
• Business Acumen: Professionals at all levels need to be able to cultivate effective decision-making and understand how their projects align with the big picture of broader organizational strategy and global trends.

?We see above that the project manager needs to understand and apply ways of working, by applying principles within the domains listed in the PMBOK? Guide. It must also master the art of taking decisions and align his/her project to the needs of the organization and of a broad community. Last but not least, it must have interpersonal skills to manage the engagement of various stakeholders in the project.

Concluding this article, it is clear that PMI Talent Triangle? is a way of describing the profile of an excellent professional, a person that is able to manage projects or domains of a projects and turn them into success. It is clear that the definition of this profile has evolved in time, as the entire world. The encouraging fact is that PMI keeps this profile as a high standard to be achieved by all the people who intend to enter the elite of the art of managing projects.

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Project Management Institute Inc., A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK? Guide), 2013 & 2017, CCR Handbook, 2024.? Copyright and all rights reserved.? Material from this publication has been reproduced with the permission of PMI.