IT Project Manager

Career Area: Information Technology

Occupation Group: IT Managers

Salary

Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.

An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.

A typical IT Project Manager earns the following wages (national and state):

State

The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $96,423

National

The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $93,533

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

Manages projects for a company in the information technology industry. Projects may include initiatives to create new products or improve or expand technology or systems. Identifies project requirements, develops and manages project budgets and schedules, leads project teams, and manages communications with project stakeholders, including company management and clients.

Employment Trends

The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.

Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:

Skills

A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:

Baseline Skills

The following are baseline skills every IT Project Manager is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:

• Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
• Planning: Working experience with the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve desired goals.
• Teamwork / Collaboration: Experience working in collaborative efforts with a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.
• Problem Solving: Problem solving consists of using generic or ad hoc methods, in an orderly manner, for finding solutions to problems.
• Organizational Skills: Experience with a systematic process of structuring, integrating, co-ordinating task goals, and activities to resources in order to attain objectives.

Specialized Skills

These skills are specific to working in this career:

• Project Management: Project management is the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria.
• Budgeting: Experience planning how the financial resources of a business or department are to be allocated during the next business period.
• Project Planning and Development Skills: Project management is the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria.
• Scheduling: Working experience making schedules, which are basic time-management tools, consisting of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place withing an organization.
• Scrum: Scrum is a framework for managing software development.

Distinguishing Skills

Any IT Project Manager that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:

• Business Analysis: Experience identifying business needs and and determining solutions to business problems.
• Lifecycle Management: In industry, product lifecycle management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from inception, through engineering design and manufacture, to service and disposal of manufactured products.
• ITIL: ITIL, formally an acronym for Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is a set of detailed practices for IT service management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business.
• Agile Development: Working experience of Agile Development, which is an umbrella term for a set of methods and practices based on the values and principles expressed in the Agile Manifesto. Solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams utilizing the appropriate practices for their context.
• Systems Development: Systems development is the process of defining, designing, testing, and implementing a new software application or program.

Experience

This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.

Common Job Titles

It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:

• Project Manager
• It Project Manager
• Senior Project Manager
• Digital Project Manager
• Infrastructure Project Manager

Similar Occupations

If you are interested in exploring similar occupations, you may want to research the following job titles:

• Senior Project Manager