Project managers might just have the toughest job in IT, responsible as they are for ensuring that high-stakes IT projects are completed on time and on budget. According to a new report from Forrester Research, the project manager's role is getting even more demanding and difficult to fill.

It's no longer enough for project managers to possess good people skills and to be fluent in project management best practices, tools and methodologies. To succeed—and get hired—today, project managers need enhanced leadership skills; they need to be flexible and focused on business value; and they increasingly need to be familiar with Agile software development methodologies, writes Forrester Analyst Mary Gerush in Define, Hire and Develop Your Next Generation Project Managers. A former IT project manager herself, Gerush and colleagues interviewed IT professionals and project management experts from a variety of organizations, including Chevron, Microsoft and LiquidPlanner, for the report.

[ See also The Six Attributes of Successful Project Managers ]

Gerush notes that shifting business conditions are changing the role of the project manager and the skills associated with it. "Organizations are striving to achieve faster [software] delivery without diminishing quality or increasing cost," she writes. As a result, she observes, they're moving from traditional software development methodologies to more Agile ones.

The move to Agile software development "shifts the role of the project manager from a director to a facilitator," writes Gerush, because Agile development methodologies rely on self-managed, cross-functional teams. In an Agile software delivery environment, the traditional command-and-control approach of project managers is counter-productive, Gerush notes. Instead of defining roles and making sure team members are following project management processes and procedures to a T, next generation project managers need to focus on improving collaboration and removing obstacles and distractions so that project team members can get their work done on time and on budget.

[ For more on Agile, see Agile: Friend or Foe to Project Management and Agile Rising. ]

Another trend changing the role of the project manager is the need for companies to make business and IT processes leaner. "As organizations realize that traditional software delivery methods are bloated with processes and artifacts that add little or no value, they are trending toward Lean Software—and this transition will significantly change how they deliver projects," writes Gerush. "Project management offices (PMOs) are looking for ways to streamline their processes to focus on value and eliminate unnecessary effort and documentation; project managers must adapt to communicating more while documenting less." That means project managers need to be flexible enough to adapt their approaches to the needs of the business. It also means they need even stronger communication skills than in the past.

As companies distribute their software development around the world, the project manager's ability to communicate with and relate to people from different cultures becomes even more important.