The subject of project managers' competencies was very popular in scientific research over the past decades. A great number of academic researchers studied the field of project manager's competencies, its impact on project success and correlation to project performance and key characteristics of a project environment. The aim of this literature study was to analyze methodological aspects of aforementioned studies in order to identify research patterns applied, research instruments used, respondents' profiles and others. It's understandable that publications related to competencies of project managers can be found in leading project management journals. These articles constituted also a basis of the analysis. Furthermore, publications considered were narrowed to those focused on at least one of three appointed aspects, namely identification of competencies, their evaluation or relative importance assessment. Over a dozen of articles were obtained as the outcome of journals review. Key characteristics of selected studies were systematically analyzed and compared, including, among others, construction of the respondents group, examined subset of competencies and the approach adopted to identification and evaluation of competencies. As a result some patterns and repeatable elements were found. Moreover, two identified contentious practices were discussed - usage of a self-assessment to evaluate performance of respondent and usage of project success criteria aimed at assessing the performance of a project manager.