UNIT-IIIPROJECT EXECUTING PROCESSES

BY NISHANT KUMAR

ACQUIRING AND DEVELOPING THE PROJECT TEAM

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.

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.

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.

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.

MANAGING THE PROJECT TEAM

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.

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.

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

CONFLICT RESOLUTION TECHNIQUES

MANAGING STAKEHOLDER EXPECTATIONS

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)

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.

DIRECTING AND MANAGING THE PROJECT WHILE ASSURING QUALITY

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.

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

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.

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