8 top-paying process and project management skills

Despite an overall leveling off of tech salaries in 2017, demand for specialized skills remains strong, translating to rising pay for IT pros with cloud, process management, and big data skills, according to the 2018 Dice Tech Salary Survey. In these areas, where skills are outpacing the national average, “salaries for skills where employers have to compete for a limited supply do come with a premium,” says Michael Durney, president and CEO of DHI Group, Inc., the parent company of Dice, in the research summary.

If you’re looking to add skilled process or project management talent, you’ll need to understand what the market is supporting for talent with these skills, or miss losing out to your competition. Based on findings from Dice’s survey, here are the top eight highest-paying process and project management skills, their average salary and the change year-over-year. 

Capability Maturity Model Integration, or CMMI, is a process-level improvement training and appraisal program originally developed at Carnegie-Mellon University and now administered by the CMMI Institute, a subsidiary of the ISACA. CMMI can be used to lead process improvement throughout a project, a division or an entire organization, and is required by many U.S. government and Department of Defense contracts, especially in software development.

The ISO/IEC 27000 is one of a number of international Information Security Management Systems (ISMS) standards; it comprises information security standards published jointly by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The ISO/IEC 27000 offers an overview of the entire ISO/IEC family of standards and a standardized glossary of terms and definitions used through the family of standards. It describes the purpose of an ISMS and explains why it’s important to bring information security under management control throughout the standards.

Project management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), set by the Project Management Institute, provides global standards, guidelines and rules for project, program and portfolio management that will help project managers drive success in their organizations.

Short for the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, SOX is a U.S. federal law that set new or expanded requirements for public company boards, management and public accounting firms, as well as introduced provisions for privately-held companies. The regulation covers the responsibilities of a public corporation’s board of directors and adds criminal penalties for certain misconduct.

Lean organizations maximize customer value while using fewer resources and minimizing waste. To do this, Lean thinking changes the focus of management from optimizing separate technologies, assets and vertical departments to a horizontal approach that optimizes the flow of products and services across technologies, assets and departments.

Kanban is a scheduling system for Lean organizations created by Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer at Toyota. It’s a visual workflow management tool that relies on the concepts of Lean and “just-in-time” delivery processes to improve workflow efficiency and effectiveness.

Change management is a systematic approach to dealing with transitions and transformations within an organization, especially as those changes relate to goals, processes or technologies. The purpose of change management is to help effect, control and help your workforce adapt seamlessly to changes within the organization — or external changes that impact your company.

For a way to get ahead, see “7 change management certifications to boost your IT career.”

Scrum is a framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems while at the same time creating and quickly delivering products with the greatest possible customer value. It’s a simple and effective team collaboration framework that’s especially prevalent in software development and technology product development.

For a deeper look at the Scrum master role, see “What is a Scrum master? A key role for project success.”