Robbins agrees. "You can bring structure and uniformity, but you can't do it rigidly," she says.

Sharpen your social skills

Project management's roots in the construction industry may account for its traditionally heavy emphasis on measurement and scheduling, but the focus among the new generation of project managers who have been certified by Project Management Institute Inc. is on soft skills, says Emcor's Baker.

That means that understanding employee motivation, organizational dynamics and team behavior patterns has become as important to project managers as mastering critical path analysis, PERT charts and work-breakdown structures, says Baker. "We're slowly morphing to the point that softer skills are as important as the hard skills," he says.

So, how do you develop all these new skills? Project management training is certainly useful, but ultimately, experience is the best teacher. "I don't think there's a certification program that can substitute for lessons learned in life," Hagerup says. "There's a need for highly seasoned project managers on these strategic projects in organizations."