Top 10 Professional Priorities for Project Managers in 2025. What are they?

2025 is upon us. And, like all good Project Professionals, you’ll want to prioritize. Here are my top 10 professional priorities for Project Managers in 2025.

Anyone who tells you what 2025 will look like (at the start of the year) is bonkers. The best we can do is to recognize that the seed of each new year were planted in the previous year. If you want to know what your priorities should be for 2025, take a look at the way your world was, at the end of 2024.

And the one trend that seems to be 100 per cent reliable, coming into 2025 is disruption. The world has been a turbulent place in 2024. I am not just talking about political turmoil, geopolitical stresses and strains, and outright conflict, though 2024 was a big year for that! The quickening pace of AI innovation and the worsening signs of catastrophic climate change are firmly on the project profession’s agenda.

So, in this article, I want to suggest ten priorities for Project Professionals in 2025. All of them translate into the everyday concerns of our employers, clients, and sponsoring organizations. So, we must be aware of them, as project managers. Making time for them, in among simply getting the job done, will always be a challenge.

So, my first priority has to be exemplary leadership.

Priority 1: Courageous Leadership

I think that too few leaders are prioritizing the needs of their stakeholders and taking the hard decisions that they need to make. My second set of priorities will be a challenge to make happen. But they matter. And, if you care about them, then you will have to fight for them.

As project leaders, we must stand out and be prepared to do what is right, and hard, and risky. We are building the future for our communities, stakeholders, and sponsors. And this means that, to get it right, we must put ourselves on the line and act with absolute integrity. We can do nothing else if we want our teams to behave well and deliver for us.

I recommend you take a look at these two articles:

• How Personal Leadership Can Get You Better Project Results
• How Servant Leadership can Deliver Better Results from Your Project Team

Priority 2: Social Value, Sustainability, and Responsible Project Management

Although these sound like three different things – a cluster of priorities – they are closely inter-twined. Every project has the opportunity to contribute to the community and society in which it sits. And making sure it does so, is your responsibility.

An important part of this is ensuring that our projects do no harm – or, at the very least, minimal harm. Sustainability means creating projects that do no long-term damage to the planet and its various environments. Ideally, we would aim to create net environmental and social benefits in everything we do. If you were to set that as a high-priority objective in all your project activities and decisions this year, what difference could you make? And how much more proud would you and your team be at the end of the year?

Articles and videos to look at are:

• Green Project Management: Are You Ready to Think Sustainably?
• Responsible Project Management | Interview
• What is Social Value? And How Can You Measure it in Projects?

Priority 3: Coping with Pressure and Personal Resilience

A complex and demanding environment, coupled with a determination to do what is right, despite the cost, will make for high levels of stress. So, my third priority is to look after yourself.

You cannot look after your team and your stakeholders unless you are in robust physical, mental, and emotional health. To do this, you must make four things a priority in your life. You need to focus on the quality of your:

1. Fuel – what you put into your body makes a huge difference to your well-being. So too does the way you consume it. Take time to savor good food.
2. Rest – nobody can perform well when they are tired. A couple of poor nights’ sleep in a row can damage your judgment and emotional stability just as much as an excess of alcohol.
3. Energy – regular exercise does not just build up your physical stamina, but affords an opportunity to shift mental gears and detach from the stressful concerns of your workplace
4. Relationships – these are both an indicator of our mental health and the source of protection for it. Invest time and effort in maintaining the relationships that matter to you.

We have another feature article that may interest you: Resilience Unleashed: The Secret to Project Success Under Pressure

Priority 4: Time for Yourself

Linked to priority 3 is the need to carve out time that is just for yourself. It seems unfashionable to talk about having a hobby these days, but maybe the term ‘passion project’ will be more appealing. And, what I encounter ever more often are project managers with a ‘side gig’ – a project on the side. Do what it takes to create balance in your life.

Priority 4: Who’s the Boss?

This priority does not change from year to year. I fully expect it to be a priority in 2026 – and also in 2036 – and probably 2136. As a project manager, you are serving your client, your sponsor, your organization. But the people who will truly judge your work are your stakeholders, users, and customers.

So exceptional stakeholder engagement is the one lever to successful project management that will always dominate the others. One of my favorite sayings is that:

‘Stakeholder engagement is how sophisticated adults manage projects’

This is to say that, if you place your stakeholders at the heart of every scrap of planning and delivery, you will be most likely to get things right. Make the commitment to engage them actively. Ask questions, listen, respect their views, and open a dialogue. Keep your stakeholders fully informed, and work hard to balance the needs of each against those of the others.

After all, another of my favorite sayings is that:

‘Stakeholders will determine the success – or not – of your project.

We have a lot of content about stakeholder engagement. Here is a carefully selected selection that is particularly relevant:

• Meeting Customer Expectations: 6 Simple Steps You Must be Sure to Take
• Good Customer Service: How to Keep Your Client and Stakeholders Happy
• How to Plan an Effective Stakeholder Engagement Campaign
• Astonish Your Stakeholders… with a Stakeholder Listening Plan | Video

Priority 6: Agility and Certainty

There are plenty of Project Management commentators to remind you of the rise and rise of Agile. Certainly, if you are not yet aware of its strengths, shortcomings, and methodologies, you’ll need to make learning about it a priority for 205 (see priority 7).

There are also plenty of Agile zealots who will tell you, variously, that traditional PM is dead… or that it ought to be! To the, I say your priority is to chill and get some perspective. Thousands of years of successful planned, ‘traditional’ projects suggest that these methods are the baby, not the bathwater.

The real priority here is to recognize that you always have three principle options when determining your broad approach to a project:

1. First, a largely planned, predictive approach that borrows shamelessly from the Agile toolset, when you need to
2. Second, a fundamentally agile approach that selects a suitable methodology, but also incorporates useful elements from traditional project management
3. Third, a truly blended approach that draws generously from the full breadth of traditional and agile thinking.

Alternative Priority 6

But, if you know all this already, I’ll offer you an alternative priority. Agile Project Management is 35 years old (give or take a nuance of definition). It really isn’t a new thing anymore. Neither is the concept of hybrid project management that combines all aspects of different approaches to create an optimum process for each project.

So, what is new?

I don’t know? So, maybe, you bcan be the one to determine what that next evolution will be. I’ve seen a lot of great approaches, but none seem to me innovative enough and insightful enough to cut through… yet.

Priority 7: Hone Your Skills for Virtual Leadership

The rise of small, compact, agile teams, who use Scrum or Scrum-like methodologies has had an important mirror. This is the rise of large, global teams who rarely or never meet in the real world.

Large organizations have always had to organize globally. But, every year, more of us are working with virtual teams, in different offices, in different organizations, and in no office at all, but a converted bedroom in a private home.

These are virtual teams, made of people who work together, but may never meet. There are plenty (maybe too many choices of) tools that will oil the bearings of virtual collaboration. But the values that drive good teamwork won’t change. And, as a project manager, you need to understand them, and put them into practice.

Challenges to Remote Working

Yes, there has been a bit of a backlash against working from home in 2024. But I think this is a blip and a correction to a prevailing trend that will continue for the next few years.

But, with all the growth in remote working and virtual teams, it astonishes me how thin the various sources are, on this subject. There is much for us still to learn, as a community and as a human culture. After all, we evolved to cooperate in small, close-knit groups, living and working together. We need to figure out new ways to do something that is alien to the way our brains and cultures are wired.

Add to this the knowledge that cross cultural interactions are hard. Working with people who are different from us is always going to be more tricky than working with people who are largely the same. But this is nothing, compared to managing a big group of widely different people, in different time zones,  over an ADSL fiber.

Read:

• Remote Project Management: Get a Grip on the Path to Success
• Lessons I’ve Learned about Virtual Working | Video
• Managing Remote Teams: How to Meet the Challenges

Priority 8: Embrace Neuroscience

In the early 2000s, many project managers recognized the need to learn about emotional intelligence. We strived to work on our:

• Self-awareness
• Self-control
• Empathy
• Social Skills

And it has made a big difference to the profession. Many textbooks, courses, and certifications include this topic to a greater or lesser extent.

But now, we have an even deeper well of knowledge and insight in the study of neuroscience and how it applies to leadership, management, and project management.

If this is new to you – or even if you’re familiar with it – make learning (more) about it a priority for 2025. As you’d expect, we have resources to help you:

• What is Neuroscience | Video
• Power of Neuroscience: How to Harness it for Project Success
• Neuroscience for Project Managers with Carole Osterweil | Video

Priority 9: Keep Learning

This last priority is, like some of the others, an evergreen priority. It’s built into most professional qualifications, like those of the PMI and APM. As a professional, your skills need to grow, or they will wither. There is no middle ground.

A failure to invest in your knowledge and skills will mean they don’t just stop growing: they will die. Continual professional development is not just a set of points to keep a qualification: it’s a duty… and also a pleasure.

Whatever route you choose for professionalism, I think the PMI’s guideline of 35 education hours per 3 years has to be an absolute minimum. That is, after all, just an hour a month. And you cannot even read a decent professional magazine in that time. It’s just three articles like this, per week.

So, whether it’s learning more about virtual teams, doing an Agile course, reading a book on stakeholder engagement, or attending a cookery workshop, do make 2025 another year when you keep learning.

• Podcast: The Value of Lifelong Learning for Project Professionals

Priority 10: Artificial Intelligence

You really did not think I’d forget this, did you? It’s no longer ‘the big new thing’. AI and data analytics are now a core part of the project profession. If you aren’t continuing to develop your knowledge and experience in 2025, others will be. And they will have an advantage over you, in career terms, in 2026. Learning more about AI is a no-brainer.

Yes, we have a full (and growing) list of articles and videos available. But we are not deep experts in every aspect of AI, nor in its application to each sector of industry and commerce and to each function within an enterprise.

Artificial Intelligence & Project Management Professional Briefing

But, I do scan a dozen or so high-reliability sources that are expert in all these areas. And our Artificial Intelligence and Project Management Professional Briefing will keep you up-to-date, with (literally) weekly updates, collated into monthly lists of new:

• Reading content
• Audio content
• Video content

Our AI & PM Briefing Kit has all our ‘AI & PM’ resources – and will include all public content before it goes out on YouTube or this website. Get it for just $37 (lifetime).

What are Your Professional Priorities for 2025?

I’d love to read your priorities – especially if you think there is something important I have missed! As always, I will respond to every comment.