The document discusses various processes for executing projects, including acquiring and developing project teams. It describes techniques for acquiring team members through pre-assignment, acquisition, and negotiation. It also discusses functions of virtual teams and skills required for developing project teams, such as interpersonal skills and training. The document outlines techniques for managing project teams through observation, performance appraisals, and conflict management. It discusses methods for distributing information, managing stakeholder expectations, directing project execution through work performance reporting, and performing quality assurance.
3. ACQUIRING THE PROJECT TEAM
Acquiring the project team techniques are:
Pre-Assignment
When project team members are selected in advance they are considered pre-assigned.
This situation occurs if the project is the result of specific people being promised as part of a competitive proposal.
Acquisition
When the performing organization lacks the in-house staff needed to complete the project, the required services may be
acquired from outside sources.
This can involve hiring individual consultants or subcontracting work to another organization.
Negotiation
The project management team may need to negotiate with:
Functional managers to ensure that the project receives appropriately competent staff in the required time frame, and
that project team members will be able to work on the project until their responsibilities are completed.
Other project management teams within the performing organization to appropriately assign scarce or specialized
human resource, and
External organizations, vendors, suppliers, etc., for appropriate, scarce, specialised, qualified, certified or other such
specified human resources.
4. FUNCTIONS OF VIRTUAL TEAM
The functions of a virtual team are:
Groups of people with a shared goal, who fulfill their roles with little or no time, spent
meeting face to face.
Electronic communication, such as e-mail, has made such teams feasible.
The virtual team format makes it possible to:
Form teams of people from the same company who live in widespread geographic areas.
Add special expertise to a project team even though the expert is not available in the same
geographic area.
Incorporate employees who work from home offices or those working different shifts or hours.
It requires additional time to set clear expectations and develop protocol.
Communications planning plays a key role.
5. SKILLS REQUIRED FOR DEVELOPING
THE PROJECT TEAM
Objectives of developing a project team include:
Improve knowledge and skills of team members in order to increase their ability
to complete the project deliverables more efficiently.
Improve feelings of trust and agreement among team members in order to raise
morale, lower conflict and increase team work.
Create a dynamic and cohesive team culture to improve both individual and
team productivity, team spirit, and cooperation, and to allow cross-training and
mentoring between team members to share knowledge and expertise.
6. Techniques for developing project team are:.
Interpersonal Skills
Sometimes known as soft skills, are particularly important for team development.
Skills such as empathy, influence, creativity, and group facilitation are valuable assets while managing
the project team.
Training
Includes all activities designed to enhance the competencies of the project team members.
Examples of training methods include classroom, online, computer-based, on-the-job training, mentoring
and coaching.
Team Building Activities
Can vary from a five-minute agenda item to a status review meeting to an off-site, professionally
facilitated experience designed to improve interpersonal relationships.
Ground Rules
Involves establishing clear expectations regarding acceptable behavior by project team members.
Co-location
Involves placing many or all of the most active project team members in the same physical location to
enhance their ability to perform as a team.
Rewards and Recognition
Only desirable behavior should be rewarded. For example, the willingness to work overtime to meet an
aggressive schedule objective should be rewarded or recognized; needing to work overtime as a result
of poor planning by the team member should not be rewarded.
Generally money is viewed by most as a very tangible aspect of any reward system, but other intangible
rewards are also effective.
Most team members are motivated by an opportunity to grow, accomplish, and apply their professional
skills to meet new challenges.
8. MANAGING PROJECT TEAMS
The process of managing project teams are:
Involves tracking team member performance, providing feedback and
appraising team member performance.
Coordinating changes to enhance project performance.
Resolving conflicts.
Requires a variety of management skills for fostering teamwork and integrating
the efforts of team members to create high-performance teams.
9. TECHNIQUES FOR MANAGING
PROJECT TEAMS
Observation and Conversation
Are used to keep in touch with the work and attitudes of project team members
The Project Management Team monitors progress toward project deliverables,
accomplishments, and interpersonal issues
Project Performance Appraisals
Objectives for conducting performance appraisals during the course of a project
include clarification on roles and responsibilities, constructive feedback to team
members, discovery of unknown or unresolved issues, development of individual
training plans, and the establishment of specific goals for future time periods.
10. Conflict Management
When handling conflict in a team environment, project managers should recognize the following
characteristics of conflict and the conflict management process:
Conflict is natural and forces a search for alternatives
Conflict is a team issue
Openness resolves conflict
Conflict resolution should focus on issues, not personalities, and
Conflict resolution should focus on the present, not the past
Success of a project is dependent on how effectively conflicts get resolved
Interpersonal Skills
Project Managers use a combination of technical, human, and conceptual skills to analyse situations and
interact appropriately with team members. Some of the interpersonal skills the project managers use most
often are:
Leadership
Ability to communicate the vision and inspire project team for a high performance
Influencing
Ability to be persuasive and clearly articulate points and positions
Effective Decision Making
Ability to see various view points and act decisively
13. INFORMATION DISTRIBUTION
METHODS
Effective information distribution includes a number of techniques including:
Sender-receiver models (feedback loops and barriers to communication)
Choice of media (when to communicate in writing versus orally, when to
write an informal memo versus a formal report)
Writing style (Active versus passive voice, sentence structure and word
choice)
Meeting management techniques (Preparing an agenda and dealing with
conflicts)
Presentation techniques (Body language and design of visual aids)
Facilitation techniques (Building consensus and overcoming obstacles)
14. MANAGING STAKEHOLDER
EXPECTATIONS
Involves actively managing the expectations of stakeholders to
increase the likelihood of project acceptance by negotiating and
influencing their desires to achieve and maintain the project goals.
Addressing concerns that have not become issues yet, usually related
to the anticipation of future problems.
Clarifying and resolving issues that have been identified.
Helps to increase the probability of project success by ensuring that the
stakeholders understand the project benefits and risks.
16. DIRECTING AND MANAGING
PROJECT EXECUTION
Directing and managing project execution involves:
Directing project performance, managing the various organizational and
technical interfaces that exist within the project.
Implementing:
Approved corrective actions that will bring anticipated project performance into
compliance with Project Management Plan;
Preventive actions to reduce the probability of potential negative consequences;
Defect repair request to correct product defects found by quality process.
Collecting work performance information.
17. WORK PERFORMANCE INFORMATION
Work performance information includes:
Schedule progress showing status information
Deliverables that have been completed and those not completed
Estimates to complete the scheduled activities that have started
Percent physically complete of the in-progress schedule activities
Costs authorized and incurred
Extent to which quality standards are being met
Documented lessons learned posted on the lessons learned
knowledge base
Resource utilisation details
18. PERFORMING QUALITY ASSURANCE
Performing quality assurance is a process of auditing the quality requirements and
the results from quality control measurements to ensure appropriate quality
standards and operational definitions are used.
The tools include:
Process Analysis
Process analysis follows the steps outlined in the process improvement plan to
identify needed improvements.
The analysis also examines problems experienced, constraints experienced,
and non-value added activities identified during process operation.
Quality Audits
A quality audit is a structured, independent review to determine whether
project activities comply with organizational and project policies, processes and
procedures.