Executing Process Group Process – Develop Project Team

 

This is another process in Executing Process Group. Below is Inputs, Tools & Techniques and Outputs Mind Map for Develop Project Team which is classified under Human Resources Management Knowledge Area.

Important Note:

* Note# 1: There could be some typo or presentation errors. Please reply back for any corrections.

* Note# 2: You can use this for personal use (like studying for PMP Exam or PM activities). But don’t share this in common forum or web sites. As this one is part of my training guide and project management book.

Executing Process Group Process – Acquire Project Team

This is another process in Executing Process Group. Below is Inputs, Tools & Techniques and Outputs Mind Map for Acquire Project Team which is classified under Human Resources Management Knowledge Area.

 

Important Note:

* Note# 1: There could be some typo or presentation errors. Please reply back for any corrections.

* Note# 2: You can use this for personal use (like studying for PMP Exam or PM activities). But don’t share this in common forum or web sites. As this one is part of my training guide and project management book.

Career Development Framework

“Career Management” was a jargon for me till I attended a training about that. Career management & development has lot of tags attached to it like Talent, Competency, Skills, Job level, Roles & Responsibilities, Career, Improvement Plans, etc..etc..! We need to understand distinct meaning for each word to differentiate what we know with what really is it.

Once a resource joined a project almost all his future decided with the Job level, Tenure in that Job Role, How was his performance? Here is a 2 x 2 grid framework which utilizes two key factors – Tenure in Roles & Performance in deciding career development of the resource.

Learn the Job? – New to Job? New to a Role? Both scenarios fall under this category. As soon as a resource inducted/promoted in a team, his/her performance will be measured against goals set for that individual based on the roles & responsibilities attached to his/her job level.

Stretch Goals? – Resource is picking up job knowledge very well in short span of time. What to do now? Promote? Nope. Getting more exposure, in other words experience in a job level is more important for promotion. If a resource perform beyond his goals set then challenge him/her with more complex goals. This will make the project benefit out of increased productivity and also resource gets trained on number of required activities.

Improve performance? - A resource spending years in a job level without improving his performance. What do we do? “Fire him!” This will be the word management will propose. Lower the goals & give the individual a positive feeling. Identify the missing critical skill. Put him/her on training. Slowly develop the individual based on his/her own talent.

Future Responsibilities? - A resource found to be performing well for longer period of time within a job role – here comes the promotion part. Every organization has its own policies & procedures for promotion. Hence the tenure & performance scales differ. It is up to the manager to convince upper management for an individual’s promotion with all evidences.

Key points for thought:

1. Anyone will move from one quadrant to another quadrant within a performance cycle.

2. Ignored or delayed action on each quadrant results loss to the organization & de-motivate resources

3. Keep & do regularly update resources talent assessment & skill inventory

Conflict Management MindMap

Here is the conflict resolution & conflict management Mindmap. This map is self explanatory on conflict characteristics, conflict management influence factors & gives more info on each resolution type.

Characteristics of Conflict

• Natural & inevitable

• Forces a search for alternatives

• Team issue

• Needs to be resolved by conflicting parties itself

• Can be escalated to Project Manager

• Pros

  • Increased Productivity

  • Better decision making

  • Stronger team

• Cons

  • Low team morale

  • Decreased productivity

  • Biased decision making

  • Divided team

Conflict Management

• Characteristics

  • Openness required for resolution

  • Resolution focus on issues

  • Resolution focus not on personalities

  • Resolution focus on present, not the past

  • Different styles followed by different manager

• Influence Factors

• • Relative importance & Intensity of the conflict

  • Time pressure for resolution

  • Position taken by conflicting parties

  • Need resolution for Short term or Long term basis?

• Techniques

• • Withdrawing/Avoiding

  • • Worst way to resolve conflict

    • Withdrawing or Avoiding potential conflict situation

    • Temporary solution & leaves the conflict exists

    • Spoil goals & relationships

  • Smoothing/Accommodating

  • • Temporary solution & conflict may resurface later

    • Making differences smaller they seem by emphasizing more on agreement areas

    • Good for relationships

  • Compromising

  • • Permanent solution & conflict may resurface later if solution not followed

    • Getting into a solution that both parties agrees to some extent

    • middle-of-the-road kind of solution

    • Neither lose nor win

    • Will not make any difference in relationships

  • Forcing

  • • Provides Win-Lose solutions

    • One party forces other to agree

    • Happens when one has more power than other

    • Permanent solution but not the best

    • Spoil relationships

  • Collaborating

  • • Permanent solution & incorporated from one out of many resolutions

    • Resolutions provided from different viewpoints

    • More than one resolution identified, ranked and agreed best option selected

    • Leads to consensus and commitment

    • Experts or team involved in getting their viewpoints

  • Confronting/Problem Solving

  • • Permanent and indisputable solution

    • Best way to resolve conflict

    • requires a give-and-take attitude and open dialogue

    • Conflicts considered as problems & solved

    • Finds one correct solution for each disagreement area

    • Clear resolution -> no disagreement after this

    • Good for relationships

* Note# 1: There could be some typo or presentation errors. Please reply back for any corrections.

* Note# 2: You can use this for personal use (like studying for PMP Exam or PM activities). But don’t share this in common forum or web sites.

Performance Review Meetings – Common Ground for Constructive Feedback System

Performance is focused behavior or purposeful work (Rudman, 1998, p. 205)

Generally performance review meetings are depicted as fighting stage for manager and team member. In my experience, I found few thing which I like to share here. I am here to tell you how to make performance reviews more useful to the life and not how to conduct/attend a performance review activity. To me, argument on a disputed item is not wrong. But suddenly dispute arises at the end of year while discussing the performance. How come that could be possible? Main reason for these are:

* Manager and team member are not communicating well about the work performed regularly.

* Expectations set by manager are not clear or misunderstood.

* Wrong goal settings for the respective team member’s role.

* Not much work to perform. Keeping a person in bench for long time and telling he has not performed the activity for most of the review period.

* Both manager and team member doesn’t understand they are working for the project/organization and taking things personal.

* Manager lists only mistakes whereas team member points only work performed.

* Comparing team members – this is done by both manager and team member. Ex. Manager says ‘That guy is also same experience of yours but delivering more output’. Team member says – ‘That guy is also same grade as mine but you are giving more benefits to him but not to me’

* Politics between team member and manager – Ex. May be team member is an eligible candidate for Manager promotion but manager doesn’t want to promote him.

* At the extreme level, considering both of them are enemies in the battle ground. In this team member & manager never accepts each others’ comments and even throwing papers/slamming doors at the end/shouting in the loud voice happens.

Everyone, from top management till the lowest level employees, experience above mentioned point in their life every year or half yearly or quarterly based on their feedback review period. To be practical (I don’t want to use ‘Ideal’ which means ‘impossible’ in all our dictionaries!), performance review meetings are common ground for constructive feedback system. During these meetings manager and team member

* understands about each others expectations

* sets common goal to achieve to make the project successful in turn making each one involved in the project successful

* draws road map for the career goals and aspirations

* takes closer look at issues in hand and develop solutions to overcome

I started practicing above four points early on in my project management career and it is absolutely possible to do it. Try and tell me is it making any change in your teams growth.