How To Become A Senior Project Manager
What Is A Senior PM?: A senior project manager juggles multiple teams and projects while showcasing exemplary leadership, communication, and mentorship skills.
Experience Counts, Right Place Helps: Becoming a senior project manager involves a blend of experience, expertise, and sometimes just being in the right place at the right time.
Learning from Past Work: Senior project managers improve outcomes by integrating lessons from past successes and mistakes and ensuring accountability and responsibility on their projects.
If you're ready to move forward in your project management career and find a new challenge, it might be time to look into how you can become a senior project manager and get that promotion you've had your eye on.
In this article, I’ll take a look at what a senior project manager is, how to become one, and if becoming a senior PM has more to do with experience and expertise or being in the right place at the right time.
What Is A Senior Project Manager?
A senior project manager is a project manager at the more experienced end of the scale, who manages multiple projects and teams at the same time.
Senior-level project managers demonstrate outstanding leadership skills and influence those above and below them, even though they aren't in an executive level position.
Project Manager vs Senior Project Manager
What differentiates entry-level, junior, or intermediate level project managers from senior project managers is how they demonstrate leadership, communication, and coaching and mentoring while carrying out the expected duties and responsibilities of a project manager.
The project manager has the single most important position on a project team and has the overall responsibility for its success. This position comes with a tremendous responsibility, accountability, ownership, and authority.
These responsibilities are usually gained via years of experience working on projects as either a project manager or program manager. According to Whitten, these include:
- Full accountability and responsibility for the project: Accountable for outcome of project
- Applying lessons learned from recent projects: Learns from past mistakes and successes
- Defining roles & responsibilities: Responsible for making sure everyone on the project team understands what they need to do and what is expected of them
- Leading project planning activities: Leads the development, execution, and monitoring of the project plan against project performance
Leadership Skills
At the core of the project management role is the ability to lead people. What differentiates a junior vs senior project manager is the type of leadership style they use and how they use their position to influence others. Senior project managers may use charismatic or expert leadership styles.
As a senior PM, you'll also be viewed as a leader due to your knowledge and experience from managing other projects. You'll need to be able to influence stakeholders without using coercion or relying on a position of authority.
You'll be able to communicate the goals and vision of the project and inspire stakeholders to support this in order to deliver a project’s results. Junior or intermediate project managers rely more on their formal position in order to influence those on a project.
Communication Skills
Senior project managers should have exemplary communication skills. You must be able to deliver messages to the appropriate stakeholders using the appropriate tools at the right time, and understand and interpret verbal and non-verbal communication as well.
This doesn't mean you need to have superpower skills like the ability to read minds. What it does mean is that you should be able to interpret the intention and meaning behind any communication from key stakeholders (e.g. the project sponsor) and understand how it impacts project execution and the work of the team.
Mentoring and Coaching Skills
This is a key differentiating skill between junior and senior project managers. You need to know your role and project management techniques, tools, and frameworks, as well as teach and coach others.
For instance, you might need to provide coaching to the Scrum team on how to use certain project planning tools such as a work breakdown structure, create user stories, or use a project management methodology such as Kanban.
Likewise, you might need to teach a project stakeholder about an agile project management delivery framework like Scrum or the project life cycle, as well as what their role in the project is.
You'll also need to mentor the team by providing feedback and additional resources. That’s not to say that junior project managers can’t and don’t do mentoring and coaching, but senior project managers should be able to proactively recognize when stakeholders may need coaching and support.
How Many Years Of Experience Does A Senior PM Need?
Senior project managers on average have between 5 to 8 years of work experience (with 5 years being the minimum), according to insights from job recruitment sites like Glassdoor.
It’s not just simply a matter of putting in the ‘right’ number of years and then receiving an official title change to senior project manager. Everyone is different and as such our career paths, development, and growth will look different too. It may take someone 5 years to transition into a senior project management role whereas someone else’s journey could take them 8.
What is important is being able to develop project management skills in the areas of project planning, communication, and leadership and demonstrating above average performance and knowledge in these areas.
Is Getting Promoted Just Right Place, Right Time?
It’s human nature to compare ourselves to others. You might look at peers and colleagues who are also in project management roles and wonder, “how did they get promoted and I didn’t?” Is there truth in the saying that getting promoted as a project manager is really about being in the right place at the right time?
From an office politics point-of-view, it may look and feel like this. However, any HR expert will tell you that a lot more should (and often does) factor into what makes an employee promotable.
While timing (such as an internal organizational restructuring) may provide opportunities for advancement, that alone may not provide a solid rationale for promoting a project manager into a senior PM role.
Oftentimes, organizations will look at leadership skills, project accomplishments, and the capacity to take on more complex tasks as inputs in the career advancement process. Or, they might feel that simply being in a role for a certain period of time (for example, 5 years) qualifies someone to move into a senior project manager role.
Rather than simply putting in the time, it may be more worthwhile to focus on such questions as:
- What am I doing to help the project team meet their goals?
- What contributions am I making to the organization?
- How am I encouraging and supporting the growth and development of others?
What Skills & Qualifications Do Senior PMs Need?
Kathy Schwalbe, in her book Introduction to Project Management, Seventh Edition, indicates the following skills and knowledge areas a project manager should have:
- Hands-on experience managing all ten project management knowledge areas and the eight project performance domains, tools, and techniques from the Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide)
- The application area of the project (domain, industry, market, etc.)
- The project environment (politics of the organization, culture, change management, etc.)
- General business knowledge (financial management, strategic planning, risk management, etc.)
- Human relations knowledge (leadership, motivation, communication, soft skills, etc.)
Formal project management training is also recommended. Community colleges and sites such as LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, and The DPM School all have excellent project management training in a variety of project management topics and learning styles to help project managers become upskilled.
Many project managers have formal educational qualifications such as a bachelor’s degree, or advanced degree such as a master’s degree in addition to specific project management training.
Relevant project management certifications are also highly recommended. Organizations such as PMI and Scrum Alliance offer a variety of project management certifications and learning paths. Both the PMP certification (Project Management Professional) and CSM (Certified Scrum Master) are globally recognized and sometimes required for career advancement.
How To Become A Senior Project Manager
Here are some recommendations for things to do on a regular basis to prepare you for a senior project manager role.
Volunteer
Volunteer for projects and initiatives outside of your area of responsibility: Does your organization participate in corporate social responsibility or philanthropic causes? Is there a call-out for volunteers to participate on a committee or board?
These are great opportunities to expand your experience by taking on different tasks that you may not get to do in your main role. This will demonstrate your ability to take on more responsibility and push yourself beyond your comfort zone to develop problem-solving skills.
Ask For Feedback Regularly
Be aware of gaps or areas that you may need to improve. Ask your manager or sponsor for feedback, as well as members of your project team and stakeholders. Be prepared to receive both positive and negative feedback—this will help you set goals and metrics to measure your career progress.
Invest In Your Professional Development
Seek out and take advantage of opportunities to develop your skills and knowledge. If your org provides budget for professional development, check out specialized conferences like agile conferences or training courses. If not, there are free webinars and events that you can attend to learn more about the latest trends and tools in project management.
If you are looking to learn more about specific project management software tools beyond Microsoft Project, many vendors offer free trials that you can use to become familiar with the software.
Networking within the project management community (like you can through our membership program) and meeting new project managers is also crucial for learning new skills and finding new roles.
Become a Mentor
One of the most important roles you need to fulfill is that of coach and leader, and to foster an environment for collaboration and teamwork.
Mentorship offers a great opportunity for you to build and develop your coaching skills by helping to develop someone and build both their and your interpersonal skills. It's also a great way to reflect on your own skills, experiences, and career plan.
Senior Project Manager Salary
The average salary for a senior project manager in the United States in 2024 is $115,214 USD, according to our latest salary survey data. This varies based on location, industry, and years of work experience.
Sites such as LinkedIn and Glassdoor can also offer insights into the salary range you can expect for a senior project management role.
What NOT To Do To Become A Senior PM
Nobody wants to sabotage their career. However, we may do things without realizing that they could hurt our chances of advancement into a senior project manager role.
Here are some things that you should avoid doing if you want to become a successful senior project manager:
- Being a jerk: Senior project managers need to be excellent at building relationships with everyone on the team and all stakeholders. Treat all people with respect and act in a professional manner in all interactions and communications. Being rude or acting like a bully will not help you succeed or build strong teams. Be kind and have empathy!
- Micromanaging: As a senior project manager, it is important to delegate tasks to your team and trust them to carry out those tasks. Micromanaging can create a culture of distrust and lead to low morale among team members.
- Neglecting communication: Effective communication is essential for any project. As a senior project manager, you need to communicate clearly with your team, stakeholders, and others involved in the project.
- Making assumptions: Assumptions can lead to misunderstandings and mistakes. As a senior project manager, it is important to ask questions and clarify assumptions to ensure everyone is on the same page.
- Ignoring risks: Every project has risks, and it is the responsibility of the senior project manager to identify, assess, and manage those risks. Ignoring risks can lead to project failure (here's how to avoid project failure).
- Being inflexible: Projects can be unpredictable, and it is important to be adaptable and flexible in your approach. As a senior project manager, you should be willing to adjust your plans and strategies as needed to achieve project success.
Upwards and Onwards
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