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What are soft skills and hard skills? Hard skills, often more in demand till now, is
defined as a science (Belzer, 2004) which comprises processes, tools and techniques
applied to projects. Soft skills, on the other hand, often described as an art (Belzer,
2004), is the process of managing and working with people, guaranteeing customer
satisfaction with the purpose of retaining them, thereby forming a favorable atmosphere
for the project team to deliver high quality products within budget, on time,
consequently going beyond the expectations of the stakeholders. It was not much in
demand till now, but is currently identified as critical for project success. Soft skills
are normally acquired with experience (Belzer, 2004). Some organizations, like Mastek,
Polaris and Sun Microsystems, aware of the significance of soft skills, have integrated
soft skills into their training schema (Arora, 2003).
The CHAOS Chronicle (The Standish Group, 2001) reports the yearly failure rate
of IT projects in the USA. Countries like the UK and USA which are developed have
an advantage because of the use of well-tailored methodologies, tools and techniques
which were launched as the effect of rigorous research and development initiatives from
both the academia as well as professional bodies like the Project Management Institute
(PMI) and Office of Government Commerce (OGC - UK). As per a survey conducted
by Sonnekus and Labuschagne (2004), the IT projects in South Africa were found to
fail at the rate of 22%, which is comparable to the rate released by the CHAOS Chronicle
in 2000. Another survey carried out in Mauritius during 2003 (Sukhoo et al., 2004)
exposed that at least 50% of software projects suffered due to inability to match the
agreed deadline for project completion or module completion, 50% in overshooting
expenses and thus exceeding budget, and 30% due to issues with quality.
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