The key elements of the project management plan that are useful as inputs into the Plan Human Resource Management process are a description of the work to be completed to determine what skills will be required and elements from the project schedule and schedule management plan that are useful for determining time constraints. The project management plan is an output from the Develop Project Management Plan process.

Activity resource requirements contain information about the specific activities to be completed and the resources, particularly human resources, needed to complete the work. Activity resource requirements are an output from the Estimate Activity Resources process.

The specific enterprise environmental factors that are useful as inputs into this process are the external organization culture, existing employees, existing organizational employment and personnel policies, and external marketplace conditions affecting availability and cost of hiring people.

The specific organizational process assets that may be important inputs into the development of your human resource management plan include any specific organizational policies, process, or guidelines for the recruitment, reward, and retention of people, and any historical information about what has and has not worked on previous projects.

Before we go any further, let’s focus on describing all the roles that can exist in a typical project. In addition to the individual and defined project team member roles, the primary roles in the world of project management are the project manager, sponsor, functional manager, program manager, and portfolio manager.

The project manager is one of the key roles in the successful delivery of any product, service, or result because this role takes full responsibility for the project. The project manager works closely with the program manager, because the project manager’s project may be part of a program, and also works closely with the portfolio manager, because the project is part of a portfolio. The role of project manager is obviously central to the profession of project management. The project manager is the person assigned to lead the project team and take responsibility for the delivery of the project’s objectives. This is different from the work of a functional manager, who takes responsibility for a functional unit within an organizational structure. In some instances, a project manager may report to a functional manager, but other times the role may report to a program or portfolio manager.

A competent project manager must have a wide range of skills and experience to be successful. These include specific skills for the industry in which the manager is working, and general management skills; the manager must also demonstrate a high degree of expertise in and knowledge about project management, the ability to self-motivate and achieve results through high performance, and great personal effectiveness while leading the project. It is key to the success of the project manager that this person possess not only the right technical skills but also the right interpersonal skills, which are covered in a later section.

In addition to the role of project manager, there are also the roles of project coordinator and project expeditor. A project coordinator has less power and authority than a project manager, and a project expeditor has little or no power and authority.

The project team is made up of the staff who have been assigned or recruited to the project to provide technical skills. It includes at its core the project manager, the direct members of the project team, and also the members of the wider project team. The difference between direct members of the project team and members of the wider project team relates to whether they are assigned full-time or part-time to the project. If you are working in a matrix organizational structure, team members come from different functional areas. If it is a strong matrix organization, the team members report solely to the project manager; if it is a weak matrix organization, the team members still report to the functional managers.

The exact composition of any project team depends on the organizational culture, organizational structure, scope of work, geographic location of the work to be done, and availability of team members. There are four categories of project team. The first is the dedicated project team, where the majority of the team members are working full-time on the project. Second is the part-time project team , where functional managers have more power and authority and assignment to the project is generally part-time for both the project manager and the project team members. A third type of project team is created from the partnership between two or more organizations that agree to assign staff to the project team. This offers flexibility and the ability to secure resources and technical experience that any one organization may not have. The fourth and final form of project team is the virtual team , which is increasingly used with the broadening geographical spread of team members throughout the world. Bringing together a virtual team and getting it to perform well is a challenge for any project manager and requires special attention to overcome potential obstacles.

A program manager leads a program of projects. A program of projects is a group of projects that are linked in some way. They may share resources, or they may be contributing to a greater deliverable. The role of the program manager is to manage competing interests between the projects. A portfolio manager has responsibility for a portfolio of projects—all the projects an organization is undertaking—and is usually in charge of project-selection processes to ensure that all projects align with organizational strategy and meet documented financial and nonfinancial criteria.

A project sponsor is the person responsible for providing the initial statement of work, approving the financial spend on the project, signing the project charter and approving any changes to it, and being the project champion. The person in this role is internal to the organization and sits on the project steering committee or group. The role of the project steering committee or group is to provide high-level support, oversight, and, if required, governance.

Figure 7-1 shows the hierarchy of roles from project steering committee down to members of the wider project team.

The functional manager is a role that a project manager needs to be mindful of, because the majority of organizations are organized around functional areas, even if they are acting as matrix organizations. The functional manager is usually a general manager or team leader of a particular group of technical experts, and this manager assigns staff members to the project for the duration of the project. The project manager must negotiate with the functional manager for the people; who has the most power in the relationship will affect availability of people for the project. This issue is discussed in more depth in an upcoming section.

Now that the typical roles in an organization have been covered, you can use organizational charts and position descriptions to help produce the human resource management plan. There are several graphical and text-based formats for doing this. The most popular are organizational charts, matrix charts such as the RACI chart, and text-based descriptions , such as those often used for job descriptions.

The organizational chart is another example of a breakdown structure such as the work breakdown structure (WBS) . It takes a high-level concept—in this case, the organization—and breaks it down into its component roles. It starts at the top with the chief executive officer (CEO) or general manager and breaks down the organization into lower-level roles such as line manager, team leader, team member, and specific technical roles. In addition to using the chart to break down organization-wide roles, you can also use it to break down project roles, in which case you have the project manager at the top and lower-level project roles beneath this. Figure 7-2 shows an example of an organizational chart.

Another popular way to display not only roles but also the responsibilities of different roles is a matrix-based chart called a RACI chart . A RACI chart is a type of responsibility assignment matrix (RAM). A RACI chart describes who is responsible (R), who is accountable (A), who will be consulted (C), and who will be informed (I) about different activities. Being responsible for an activity means producing or actually completing the work, whereas being accountable for an activity means having to answer for the work being done or not being done on time. A single person can be both responsible and accountable for an activity, and if your project is large enough to have many team members, you can split the responsibility and accountability as a means of ensuring better management of activities. Figure 7-3 shows an example of a RACI chart.

Networking is the action of interacting with and building relationships with other people for political and influencing purposes. Networking can be undertaken in both informal and formal ways. Networking is important because getting the people you want when you want them usually involves negotiation with other managers.

As part of your efforts to produce an appropriate human resource management plan for your project, you need to have a good grasp of organizational theory and how it impacts on human resource management and project success. The way in which an organization is structured can influence its culture, its strategy, its personnel recruitment, and the projects it chooses to do. Different organizational structures have different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to successful project management. The main types of organizational structures are the functional organization, the matrix organization, and the projectized organization. The organizational structure is usually demonstrated in the organizational breakdown structure or organization chart .

In a functional organizational structure , there is a chief executive officer (CEO) or similar at the top. Under the CEO are general managers, or functional managers, of each functional area. Below the general managers are team leaders. There may also be shared services, such as human resources and finance, directly reporting to the CEO as well. In this sort of organizational structure, staff report directly to the functional manager, who is responsible for assigning them to work or deciding on their remuneration packages and ensuring that they are part of the team; thus, the functional manager has all the power and authority. If an organization wants to undertake a project, generally the project is staffed by members from one functional area, and there can be little cooperation and coordination between the different functional areas. A project manager working in this sort of organizational structure will have great difficulty in obtaining the people and finances needed to complete the project without first getting approval from the functional manager. Figure 7-4 shows an example of a functional organizational structure.

A matrix organization is one in which a functional structure exists, but the organization has decided to do projects by using people and resources from different functional areas. The project manager is assigned a team and access to resources from these different functional areas, and both the project manager and functional manager have power and authority in deciding the allocation and use of people.

In a weak matrix organization , most of the power and authority resides with the functional manager. Due to the project manager’s low levels of power and authority in a weak matrix organizational structure, the role may more appropriately be described as a project expeditor or project coordinator. In a strong matrix organization , most of the power and authority is with the project manager. Between strong and weak forms of the matrix organization is the balanced matrix , where power and authority is shared between functional managers and project managers. Figure 7-5 shows an example of a matrix organization with the dotted lines around roles indicating which people are assigned to the project.

Projectized organizations are organized according to the projects they undertake. In this instance, the project manager acts almost as a functional manager, but instead of having a team of specialists and a functional area, the project manager has the project team, which may consist of several different technical specialties. In this instance, the project manager acts as general manager of the project and has full power and authority. Figure 7-6 shows an example of a projectized organization .

Table 7-2 shows the allocation of power and authority between functional managers and project managers in the different types of organizational structures.

Expert judgment from functional managers, current and potential team members, the project sponsor, and other stakeholders will be useful as you put together your human resource management plan.

Meetings are a useful way to bring together members of the project team and other stakeholders so that they can contribute to the development of the human resource management plan.

The Plan Human Resource Management process has the human resource management plan as its sole output. Similar to other management plans, the human resource management plan provides a description of the overall approach to human resource management and details specific guidelines on acquiring, developing, training, motivating, rewarding, and managing your project team members. In addition to the text describing all of these aspects, the human resource management plan also includes diagrams such as organizational charts and RACI charts.

An important sub-plan of the human resource management plan is the staffing management plan , which describes when and how project team members are to be recruited. The staffing management plan identifies whether project team members are to be recruited from internal or external sources, and the process by which they will be described, contacted, assessed, and appointed.

The human resource management plan is a subsidiary of the project management plan and is used as an input into the three human resource management executing processes. It is also used as an input into the Estimate Costs process, because it provides information about personnel costs, and it is used as an input into the Identify Risks process.

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The human resource management plan is obviously a key input into the Acquire Project Team process because it provides a description of how you will carry out acquiring the people you need for your project team. More specifically, the human resource management plan includes a description of the roles and responsibilities required during the life of the project to complete the project activities, and the project organizational chart showing the number and reporting lines of people on the project team.

One of the most important parts of the human resource management plan to be used as an input into the Acquire Project Team process is the staffing management plan, because it specifically addresses how project team members are to be acquired. The human resource management plan is an output from the Plan Human Resource Management process. The staffing management plan is a subsidiary plan of the human resource management plan.

The specific types of enterprise environmental factors that will be useful in acquiring your project team are any local government or industry regulations affecting the employment of project personnel. Other enterprise environmental factors may also include general organizational structure issues.

The specific types of organizational process assets that will assist you in acquiring your project team members include any relevant organizational policies, processes, and guidelines relating to the acquisition and employment of people. Additionally, historical information and lessons learned from previous projects are also useful organizational process assets.

Preassignment is the advanced allocation of project team members to your project. This can happen as a result of both internal and external processes in which specific people are assigned to the project as a result of the skills and experience they may have or because of particular contractual arrangements.

Negotiation for project team members occurs in several ways. First, you need to negotiate with functional managers to get the staff you want when you want them. Your ability to negotiate in the circumstances reflects your power and authority. If you are working in a weak matrix environment, you have little power and authority, and the allocation of project team members to your project will be at the discretion of the functional manager. However, if you are working in a strong matrix organization, you have the power and authority to get the project team members you need when you need them.

The process of negotiation also occurs with external providers of project team members, or during the process of recruiting a project team member and the negotiation of a particular employment contract.

Given the importance of negotiation in acquiring project team members in a timely and cost-effective manner, it is important that you have good negotiation skills.

The term acquisition in this instance means an external process of advertising for, interviewing, and negotiating employment contracts with project team members. Often this process is best left to professionals with experience in advertising and recruitment.

The use of virtual teams is becoming increasingly common throughout the world as technology allows people to work together in ways they previously couldn’t. These virtual teams can be separated by different floors in a building, can be in different cities, or can even be in different countries. The advantages of a virtual team are that it allows you to use the skills and experience of people who may not be able to co-locate in the same area, and also to cater to individual preferences in terms of work hours or work locations. The use of virtual teams is also a legitimate option when a project may incur large travel expenses in order to host face-to-face meetings. A drawback of virtual teams is that it is difficult to maintain effective communication by using any sort of technology, such as e-mail, telephone, or video conference.

The process of acquiring project team members can also use multicriteria decision analysis so that you can take into account a variety of criteria in order to make the best decision about who should be selected to work on the project. In this instance, you choose the criteria that are relevant; these criteria can be such things as cost, experience, and availability. You give each of these a weight and then score individual candidates, multiply their scores by the weightings, and arrive at a total score. By ranking each candidate by their total score, you can determine your preferred candidates.

A key output from the Acquire Project Team process is, of course, the project staff assignments. Project staff assignments provide documentation of project team members’ names, roles and responsibilities, contact details, and other relevant information that allows all interested stakeholders to view who is part of the project team, their roles, and how to contact them. The project staff assignments go on to be used as an input into the Manage Project Team and Develop Project Team processes.

Resource calendars are a useful output from the Acquire Project Team process because they document when people are available to work on the project. At a high level, they include such things as weekends or public holidays; at a lower and more specific level, they include when personnel actually work according to their individual work agreements and any known holidays they are taking. The resource calendars go on to be used as an input into the Develop Project Team process, as well as the Estimate Activity Resources, Estimate Activity Durations, Develop Schedule, and Determine Budget processes.

The specific parts of the project management plan that may be updated as a result of the Acquire Project Team process are the human resource management plan and any documents affected by the human resource management plan.

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The human resource management plan is a critical input into the Develop Project Team process because it sets out and describes how the process of developing a high-performing team will occur. The human resource management plan is an output from the Plan Human Resource Management process.

The project staff assignments describe who the individual project team members are and their current roles, experience, and ability. This information is useful for identifying team members and deciding who needs training. Project staff assignments are an output from the Acquire Project Team process.

Resource calendars , which identify when the project team members are available to work, are an important input into the Develop Project Team process because they let you know when people are available to participate in team-building activities. Resource calendars are an output from the Acquire Project Team process.

Interpersonal skills are key skills for any project manager to have so that the manager can effectively contribute to the development of the team. Team development is not a mechanical exercise; it is one built on relationships between people. Thus, interpersonal skills, or soft skills, are useful in building these relationships and contributing toward a high-performing project team.

A project manager must develop and learn a wide range of interpersonal skills to use at the appropriate times. These include the following 11 skills:

You now look at each of these skills in more detail.

In order to fully develop individuals on your team, you need to offer training in both technical and nontechnical (or soft) skills. Training can occur using internal or external trainers and can occur in a classroom environment, on the job, or, increasingly, via remote or online means. Training needs can be agreed on with team members at regular intervals such as during their performance appraisals, or training can be provided reactively in response to observed needs.

The Tuckman five-stage model is a convenient way to describe the stages a team goes through: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Although many models show these as linear stages in team development, this isn’t always the case; any of the behaviors can be observed at any time. Also, teams can cycle between and within an area, and providing awareness of the model and stages to team members can help propel your team to the performing stage more quickly. The key point about the model is that your goal is to get your team to the performing stage and keep them there with proactive team management.

Figure 7-9 shows the different stages of the Tuckman five-stage model against performance and time. Although the diagram may indicate an unstoppable linear progression, the reality is that team dynamics can be highly unstable and teams are always in danger of slipping backward into storming behaviors.

Performing describes the state where the team has moved through the other phases and begins to achieve a high sense of synergy. This is not a static state, however; it’s threatened by things such as conflict, team stability, team culture, and external influences. The goal is to keep the team at this stage with constant attention and effort.

Having a clear set of ground rules for expected and accepted group behaviors is an important element of successful team building. Ground rules are more often accepted and enforced by team members if they have had input into the rules’ creation. Common ground rules are related to work hours, cooperation, conflict resolution, and participation.

Co-location means trying to get as many of the project team members in face-to-face contact with each other as possible by placing them in the same physical location permanently or on a regular basis, such as in team meeting rooms. The purpose of co-location is to enhance team building through better and more effective communication and relationship building. People do these things better when they can see each other. The practice of co-locating people in the same space is often called the creation of a war room.

The purpose of recognition and rewards is to promote acceptable behaviors and discourage unacceptable behaviors from project team members. As covered already, several motivation theories point out that money is not the best way to recognize or reward performance or behavior. There are other ways of recognizing and rewarding people that are much more effective. Team members appreciate recognition, either publically or privately, for good work, and they feel valued when the right rewards are given. It is up to project managers to ensure that they are catering to individual needs with appropriate recognition and rewards.

A key element of any effort to develop individual team members is a defined way to assess individual performances and training needs. Personnel assessment tools assist in formalizing the process of assessing an individual and planning for their future professional development. A common means of doing this is via the regular performance appraisal meeting and the use of the 360-degree feedback method. In this method, feedback is sought from an individual’s peers, superiors, and those who report to that individual and then provided in a structured setting in a positive way.

The primary output from the Develop Project Team process are the team performance assessments, which are prepared by the project manager and document the training activities undertaken and still to be undertaken, any team-building activities undertaken or planned and their outcome, and individual performance assessments. These assessments are measured against any predefined performance expectations. These predefined performance expectations can include such metrics as staff turnover, length of employment, improvement in individual and team competency, and measures of team cohesiveness.

Team performance assessments go on to be used as an input into the Manage Project Team process.

The enterprise environmental factors updates that occur as a result of the Develop Project Team process include general organizational personnel employment policies and guidelines.

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The human resource management plan is a critical input into the Manage Project Team process because it provides vital information about how human resources (people) will be managed, controlled, and assessed. The human resource management plan is an output from the Plan Human Resource Management process.

Project staff assignments provide a list of the project team members, their roles, and contact details, all of which are important when managing project team members. Project staff assignments are an output from the Acquire Project Team process.

Team performance assessments , which are an output from the Develop Project Team process, contain information about the performance of both individuals and the entire project team. They can include an assessment of how well the team is performing as a whole and also individual assessments, such as key performance indicators (KPIs) from a person’s job description, an assessment of interpersonal skills, and an assessment of contribution to the organization’s goals. They can identify future training needs and contribute to professional development both while the team members are on the project and also after they leave.

The issue log is used as an input into this process because it may describe and document relevant issues relating to management of individual team members or the team as a whole. The issue log is an output from the Manage Stakeholder Engagement process.

Work performance reports , which are an output from the Monitor and Control Project Work process, provide information about how the project team members are actually performing compared to the forecasts made about their performance. Because the project team members are responsible for all aspects of the project that generate other success metrics such as time, cost, quality, and scope, it is important that the work they are expected to do generates these performance measurements. The work performance reports focus on the performance of the team and individuals.

The specific types of organizational process assets that may be useful in managing the project team include any processes or guidelines for acknowledging good work or dealing with poor performance, any financial incentive structures that may be applied to high performance, and any other relevant organizational guidelines on managing team members.

Observation and conversation are important tools to use because they allow the project manager, who has ultimate responsibility for managing a project team, to observe team member performance and talk with team members about current performance and planned future performance.

Project performance appraisals can occur on a regularly scheduled basis or on a more spontaneous basis in response to either good or poor performance. They can be conducted formally or informally but should always be viewed as an opportunity to increase good performance and offer assistance, training, and feedback to improve poor performance.

Although conflict can at times be a positive and beneficial tool for soliciting lateral thinking, in most instances conflict is perceived as a negative influence on team performance and needs to be addressed promptly, openly, and with a view to resolving the core issues in order to ensure that it does not adversely affect team performance. The most common causes of conflict between project team members are time constraints, project priorities, resource availability, differences in technical opinions, administrative processes, project cost and budget, and individual personalities.

It is the role of the project manager to take responsibility first of all for setting in place ground rules for accepted and expected behaviors in working with the team. If conflict does arise, the project manager must take responsibility for dealing with it. There are five main ways to deal with conflict, each with a different outcome:

A project manager’s interpersonal skills are very useful in managing the project team—particularly leadership, influencing, and decision-making skills. These were covered in depth in the Develop Project Team process.

As a result of carrying out the Manage Project Team process, you may discover variations between what you had planned in terms of team performance and what is actually occurring. Additionally, you may wish to amend any planned acquisition or development activities in order to optimize team performance. Any of these options will involve the creation of a change request; the change request will be an input into the Perform Integrated Change Control process, where it will be considered as part of the documented change-control process.

The specific parts of the project management plan that may be updated as a result of the Manage Project Team process are the human resource management plan and the staffing management plan.

Specific project documents that may be updated as a result of carrying out this process are such things as the issue log and project staff assignments.

The specific enterprise environmental factors that may be updated include any organizational employee performance appraisal and feedback policies and guidelines.

The specific organizational process assets that may be updated include any standard templates or processes relating to management of personnel, any templates, and any historical information or lessons-learned documentation.

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