Objectives:
Recognize the traits of successful teams.
Utilize metrics to track and improve team performance.
Learn how to enhance team cohesion.
Understand the characteristics of effective project teams.
Recognize important processes of project teams to improve their performance.
Preview
Team performance can be measured in terms of psychosocial and task outcomes. Effective teams, although pursuing different goals, often exhibit many of the same traits, such as interdependency, trust, and communication. Teams are strongly influenced by the organizational culture. These mind-sets and paradigms stem from upper management and permeate down into all facets of the organization. Organizational culture can be seen in the development of a project team charter, which lays out the goals and structure of the team, desirable performance attributes, and behavioral expectations. Performance guidelines and metrics may also be included in the team charter, or team members could be informed at a later time. Team cohesion and performance strongly depend on individual team members adhering to the behavioral code of conduct. Team cohesion is especially vital in global project teams, and due to their virtual nature, it is optimal for all team members to closely follow the leader’s guidelines and directives.1
Team work divides the task and multiplies success
—Unknown
Teams are formed to help organizations deliver products, services, and improve their quality, productivity, and profits. Teams are also expected to facilitate better decision making, and improve organizational processes and practices. Working in teams has benefits from an individual perspective; work satisfaction, knowledge, and quality of work life are likely to improve. Furthermore, work teams share problems and find solutions together, support each other in completing tasks, make decisions collectively, and resolve conflicts. While doing so, trust is gradually established among the team members, and with the leader. Building trust is one of the most important aspects of a team.
Team performance is classified into two broad areas: task outcomes and psychosocial outcomes.2
Task outcomes denote meeting the estimated schedule and budget.
Psychosocial outcomes suggest the degree of experienced friendliness and support among team members.
In a similar vein, project teams are formed with a primary purpose to deliver project outcomes within cost and time (task-related functions) and it is possible only when team members work together with collaboration and support (people-related functions). Both are important for synergy and success in project teams.
Simply bringing people together as a team does not produce these desired outcomes. Instead, managers must help develop teams and avoid or eliminate inhibitors through collective leadership, reward systems, team structure and membership, and group processes. People who have been members of poorly performing teams are well aware of the short-comings when team-development issues are not addressed.
The literature3 suggests that effective teams: (1) are interdependent, (2) are more efficient working together than individually, (3) function well to create their own magnetism, (4) do not always have the same leader, (5) care and nurture one another, (6) cheer for the leader, who—in turn—cheers them, and (7) have a high level of trust.
Although teams are expected to improve performance, one should be vigilant about signs of ineffectiveness and take prompt action. Some of the indicators for immediate attention are complaints, grievances, and low morale among team members, people-focused conflicts, unclear work assignments, lack of commitment and initiation, lack of coordination, low trust, and perceived unfairness in reward systems. Specifically, the need for team building is recognized when team meetings are ineffective and are seen as a waste of time.
Organization Culture
Every organization will take on a culture with the passage of time. The most important factors in the behavior of the team are the enterprise culture and the personality of the team members as team-specific people issues are partly dependent on the culture of the enterprise, and less on the project’s or team’s mission.
The culture of an organization is somewhat akin to the personality of an individual. The organization culture is more powerful and more pervasive than the culture that the team might adopt or develop. As a result, senior management must be careful as to the kind of subtle messages that it sends to its employees with respect to people issues. The team culture would also depend on whether the team manages a project, a portfolio, or a proposal.
Building an organization culture starts with defining a policy on performance standards and behavioral norms. Operationalizing these standards and norms starts with recruitment. Defining these standards and norms should be done during the initial stages of starting an organization followed by recruitment of like-minded people who are likely to cherish and promote these standards and norms. Many examples of such organizations are found everywhere in the world.
One should be mindful that once an organizational culture is in place, it is not easy to change. The challenge is to get rid of undesirable norms and standards and replace them with newer ones as organizations evolve. Managing changes in organizational culture resonates with managing projects as well. On the other hand, change is inevitable for projects. Evolving organizational culture and advances in project management practices mutually influence each other in bringing changes to practices, standards, and norms. A recent study4 found that organizations with highly effective communication and change management practices are more than twice as likely to outperform those organizations that are not effective in either of these areas.
Delegation Versus Micromanagement
Probably one of the most common forms of organizational structure is that of hierarchical, and the same structure is translated to project team structures in those organizations. Frequently, this form of enterprise management is blended with micromanagement. This characteristic hands-on form of management by the senior management is a definite advantage during the periods that the organization is in its infancy. However, as the enterprise grows, this form of management should be abandoned in favor of one that is suitable for a larger enterprise. The same holds true for projects and project teams.
From the project management perspective, a micromanagement mode of enterprise management will stifle creativity of the project team members. This form of management places the burden of innovations and day-to-day problem solving directly on the proverbial shoulder of the project lead or senior management. Thus, the team members will be forced to a position of either asking senior management what should be done in the face of an emerging situation or, worse yet, waiting to be told what to do.
Mature organizations adopt the delegation mode of operation and will allow the staff to become creative, innovative, and fully responsive to the emerging problems of projects. In a creativity-based project management environment, which is the delegation management style, the team members will either recommend and then take action or, better yet, solve the problem and then advise the project manager and senior management of the novel solution that remedied that emerging problem.
A manifestation of the existence of micromanagement, and lack of confidence, is the multisignature approval processes for project initiation, and for major project decisions. The multisignature process refers to the typical process by which the original plan, and the subsequent changes to that plan, of the project will be processed by the team members. It is typical that a project document will have to be approved by several levels of management, as signified by as many signatures on the approval sheet, before the document is considered to have been authorized. An interesting side effect of this multisignature process is that the credit is shared, but so is the accountability.
The issues of micromanagement and trust, or lack thereof, are closely tied to each other. Mature organizations develop confidence in project managers and project teams. If and when this hierarchical approval process were to be eliminated, or at least tempered, it would provide symbolic evidence that the senior management trusts the judgment of, and appreciates the sacrifices of, the project team.
The increase in outsourcing and the increase in the use of global projects, in both internally funded and externally funded projects, have provided a more widespread use for the delegation concept. Delegation of authority to the project team is one of the major foundation items for sophistication in project management because it signals the presence of support and trust attributes.
Delegation comes with authority and accountability. The senior management of the organization must extend the authority for the implementation of the project to the project manager and the team and hold them accountable for the success of the project. The project team should be directly responsible for the success of the project through detailed planning, skillful execution, and tactful scope change management. In such an environment, project team members would be empowered to take innovative actions to solve emerging project problems and to conduct continuous improvement in project processes. The prerequisite for this process is that the senior management must create an environment conducive to loyalty, self-sufficiency, and trust.
High-Performing Project Management Teams
By definition, projects are associated with uncertainties and unknowns and these two factors vary from project to project. It is reasonable to assume that, in project management, the issue is not if the plan will change, rather it is when or what will change, and by how much. The importance of the project manager’s leadership will be heighted during the frequent occasions when there are significant changes to the project mission.
In a mature and well-managed enterprise, there can be three different types of teams engaged in project management activities: a project team, a proposal team, and a portfolio team (Table 6.1).
The success of the project team will be judged based on the measurable values of scope, cost, and duration. The success of the proposal team has two components: drafting a winning proposal and the subsequent profit from the ensuing project. The success of the portfolio team is measured by the attributes of the projects or proposals that are considered to be the most appropriate for the prevailing strategic and financial direction of the enterprise.
Table 6.1 Types of teams
Project team
|
Project team success measures
|
Proposal team
|
Proposal team success measures
|
Portfolio team
|
Portfolio team success measures
|
The success of each team is measured by the outcome of the desired attributes of the respective deliverable of the team. Additionally, enlightened organizations pay special attention to the people attributes of teams, with the presumption that fostering harmonious teamwork favorably impacts the performance of the teams in subtle but significant ways. The project manager plays an important role as a leader and manager to foster and encourage synergy.
A successful project manager is expected to possess competencies and skills such as situational leadership skills; emotional intelligence; effective communication skills; savvy at organizational politics; and a clear understanding of the vision, values, and beliefs. Team management is considered an important competence for managing projects successfully. Furthermore, the project manager must be capable of multitasking, problem solving, and decision making.
Team Attributes
Project team attributes would include performance norms such as the level of effort, reporting, and punctuality. Moreover, team attributes should include the manner in which the members of the team relate to each other and cooperate with each other, toward their unified mission. Thus important behavioral norms include communication and conflict management. Most importantly, the team attributes highlight the extent to which the team possesses the subtle but desirable attributes of dedication, commitment to a unified goal, team spirit, harmony, and trust.
Probably one of the most effective means of assuring the repeatable success of a team is to provide guidelines for accomplishing the mission of the team. The key is to replace the ad hoc norms with detailed and formal norms, processes, and tools. One of the beneficial aspects of formalization of the team is that it will streamline the process by which the enterprise would recognize, promote, and reward that illusive concept known as team spirit.
Articulation of the ultimate goals of the team and formalization of the means by which those goals will be achieved are the fundamentals of managing the attributes of projects. Well-defined and mature enterprise processes and guidelines for planning and managing project cost, time, and scope would facilitate the formalization of professional performance. Likewise, formalization of the personal interactions among team members, with the assistance of enterprise guidelines, will clarify the conduct of the personal interactions.
Team Charter
Group norms are either written or unwritten rules that govern the behavior of team members. These norms include but are not limited to work ethic, honesty, integrity, respect, conflict management, decision making, and communication protocols. A preferred practice is developing a team charter to define these norms for common understanding and agreement (Table 6.2).
Table 6.2 Team charter
Basic performance
|
Specify
|
Personal behavior expectations
|
Attitudinal expectations
|
Desirable norms
|
Expected outcomes
|
The team charter is the instrument by which the enterprise documents and describes how the team members are expected to collaborate in the activities of the project, participate in making decisions, and more importantly how team members work in concert with one another. The team charter would specify professional performance and the personal behavior of the team members with a hopeful expectation of achieving positive harmony, teamwork, team spirit, and dedication.
Typically, a team charter begins by defining specific performance expectations, such as timeliness in delivering promised outputs, e-mail etiquette, and phone protocol. Equally important, the team charter will then highlight the standards for behaving as members of a unified and cohesive team in the difficult-to-define areas of communication, cooperation, conflict management, and civility. The unspoken and unspecified hope of the team charter is that it will invoke the desired team facets such as trust, respect, and commitment.
There is a relationship between the project charter and the team charter in that the team charter will describe the means of achieving the project charter. The shorthand description of this concept would be that the project charter specifies the deliverable by responding to the question of “what is to be accomplished,” whereas the team charter specifies the response to “how will it be accomplished.”
Team Charter
Team charter is primarily developed to provide direction for both explicit and implicit behaviors, attitudes, and responsibilities of the team members to achieve its purpose. It includes some of the norms for working together as a team and what the expected behavioral and attitudinal outcomes should be. The team leader and the team members create this document, which serves as a roadmap.
The format and content of the team charter vary depending on the team type (virtual or traditional), team size, project complexity, and constraints with which the team has to perform.
Communication norms and organizational culture influence the effectiveness of a team charter and all three of them must be aligned for optimum results. Abiding to the team charter is likely to establish trust, improve team spirit, cohesiveness, and reduce incidence of conflicts.
The team charter should include processes and guidelines for developing patterns of cooperative and communicative behavior, procedures for determining signs of conflict, guidelines for recognizing conflict, and procedures for mitigating or resolving conflict. An expected outcome of the charter is that the conflict-management processes will be used less and less, because intellectual diversity will be resolved at the minor levels, as part of the organizational culture, and not by using formalized tools for communication and collegial debate.
The spirit of the team charter should become topics of the orientation for new internal transfers to any of the project management functions. Thus, new employees will be informed of and trained in the intricacies of managing specific team performance attributes, people interaction attributes, and attitudinal attributes of the team. Such an orientation process for the new team members will help those who come into the enterprise from other possibly unsophisticated enterprises. Finally, the essence of the team charter should become a guideline during the external hiring process of new employees into the organization.
People-related policies contained in the team charter on an organization-wide basis will hopefully result in a corporate culture that is friendly to projects and conducive to success of those projects. If the same team is commissioned to work on another project, the preparation of a team charter will be far simpler. The professional performance and technical duties might be modified slightly although the personal and behavioral instructions and the attitudinal expectations will stay unchanged.
Professional Performance Guidelines
The professional performance part of the team charter addresses the team’s activities such as identifying specific tasks or deliverables and responsibilities of each team member and the manner in which the deliverable will be accomplished. Behavioral interactions and attitudinal issues of the team members influence the results of the team members’ professional performance actions.
This part of the team charter will specify the project work breakdown structure (WBS) components, and the team members to whom each component has been assigned. Then, the specific details for project planning, execution, monitoring, control, and closeout of the project will be addressed, particularly as related to the project and to the project team. It will outline the responsibility of each team member and the team as a whole in the areas of cost, duration, scope/quality, and risk.
A team member might be assigned to several components. Conversely, a component might require the efforts of several team members. If more than one person is assigned to a component, one person would be assigned as the lead person.
The details to be addressed here are what to report, how to report, and when to report. For example, items to be reported, through logging into the project-reporting portal every Wednesday, could be effort spent, effort needed, and expected delivery. Additional performance details include deadlines for component delivery, durations of meetings, and presentations.
Prescribed Behavior
The personal behavior part of the team charter will prescribe the details of behavioral guidelines as to how to handle communication, conflict, and negotiations. This part of the charter would include a code of conduct, which should become a reference document throughout the project. The unspoken, but clearly hoped, expectation is that, in time, the team would operate with the utmost amount of harmony, trust, teamwork, and dedication.
Behavioral attributes describe the human dynamics of the team. This portion of the team charter will describe modes and manners in which the behavioral attributes are handled, acknowledging the fact that the collective behavior of team members will have a major impact on the attitudinal attributes of the team members and on the success in the professional performance areas. By comparison, professional performance refers to an individual responsibility and to some extent the dry and formal side of teamwork.
In a way, the intent of the team charter is to mandate team performance and recommend personal behavior and then measure the results of that performance through team professional productivity and project success. The presumption is that it is precisely the immeasurable attitudinal attributes of respect and teamwork that are at the core of a team’s success.
Productive Project Team—Stages of Development
People are motivated by challenges and opportunities to further their career goals. Those who are assigned to project teams are almost always interested in accomplishing personal and professional goals in addition to completing their project responsibilities. Project managers should understand the personal aspirations of their project team members and support them in their aspirations. As leaders, project managers play an important role in motivating and guiding people to simultaneously complete project responsibilities and grow as professionals.
Team Formation and Introduction
Team formation occurs during the project initiation stage. Whenever feasible, the project manager should play an important role in team selection. Team members are identified and selected based on required skills for project tasks and the likelihood of making a contribution to the successful completion of the project. Defining roles and responsibilities based on the strengths and skills of team members and clearly communicating what is expected are the critical initial steps in developing an effective project team.
Team Conflict
Differences in personality types, motivation, personal and professional goals, levels of expertise, cultural differences, and levels of commitment often influence and give rise to conflicts among the team members. The project manager must pay attention to early signs of conflicts and disagreements that are manifested both in verbal and nonverbal forms and must resolve them promptly during the project initiation and planning phases. A directive leadership style in controlling negative emotions and conflict management strategies are important during the early stages of a conflict and during the initial stages of project team development.
Team Cohesion
Communication clarity in negotiating roles, responsibilities, and expected deliverables of each and every individual of the team, to a great extent, would reduce conflict and increase cohesion. The team charter plays a critical role in defining behavioral norms, respect, civility, and courtesy during daily interactions and communications. One cannot overestimate their role in building team cohesion. Informal social gatherings and happy hours would speed up team development and cohesion.
Team Performance
Ideally, project teams perform efficiently and effectively during the later stages of the planning and execution phases after going through initial challenges. The project manager plays a supportive role and maintains harmony. It is important to notice conflict or potential conflict at the initial stages and address it promptly. Communication about progress monitoring and sharing encouraging progress data would motivate people to perform better. A good project manager learns to take the blame if things go wrong and gives credit to team members for the team’s accomplishments.
Team Diffusion
As the project nears completion, the project manager must plan for the transition of team members to other assignments and projects (or new responsibilities) with a focus on continuing support for personal and professional goals of each and every team member. It is preferable to hold back appreciation, recognition, and the reward of a team member until the project is complete. The project manager must provide fair and honest feedback to each team member to recognize their strengths and identify areas for improvement and make every effort to develop their abilities.
Importance of Communication and Reporting
Communication and reporting are often used interchangeably. However, they are different. Reporting refers to the transfer of formal and factual information to key stakeholders within and outside the organization on the project performance issues such as cost, schedule, risk, scope, and quality. On the other hand, communication signifies the informal transfer of information between the individuals within the organization and usually deals with the subjects of behavior and personal interaction. Compared to reporting, which is a formal, planned, and scheduled event, communication is spontaneous and unplanned (Table 6.3).
Reporting can be within and between the teams and is usually infrequent. Reporting is typically one way and does not include an intense cycle of debate and clarification. Within the context of team charter, reporting is part of professional performance, whereas communication is part of behavioral issues. As a consequence, communication takes place often.
Table 6.3 Instances of communication
Team communication |
Debating differences of
|
Clarifications of technical issues |
Request for information |
Clarifying personal issues |
Group meetings |
Exchange of information |
One of the distinguishing characteristics of communication is that it is charged with and often tempered by feelings, perceptions, and emotions. Personal communication is usually voice-to-voice or face-to-face. Besides, personal and enterprise communication of information transfer often takes place through intonation and body language. Additionally, sometimes, team members might communicate occasionally and casually on the subjects of cost, schedule, and scope.
Needless to say, communication will have a greater impact on the ultimate success of the project. Therefore, in addition to providing guidelines for factual reporting, organizations should provide ample tools and procedures to allow people to enhance personal communication. In project-friendly organizations, the team members freely share their progress, opinions, and concerns with each other. This free exchange of information will in turn result in a cooperative spirit and synergistic innovation among team members.
The lines of communication are usually used both ways during the project execution. Unidirectional communication between individuals suggests that team performance is poor when such communication is limited to the impersonal task of the distribution of progress reports and selected data.
In productive and high-performing teams, communication occurs very frequently within the team, occasionally with people who are outside the team and within the performing organization, and much less frequently with people who are within the client organization. Healthy communication leads to cooperation, and—along with frequent communication—are the two major attributes of productive and cohesive teams. If there was no communication, it is almost certain that conflicts would develop, leading to extensive negotiations and conflict resolutions.
Conflict Management and Negotiations
Each project team member comes with a different experience, knowledge, intellect level, and personality type. Additionally, conflict occurs due to incompatible goals, thoughts, or emotions between individuals in the team. Obviously, any team or a group of highly skilled and exceptionally creative individuals will interpret facts and events differently. If the intellectual diversity is communicated and debated properly, the most appropriate solution can be identified easily and amicably. However, it may not always happen.
Most people have a general instinctive tendency to avoid all conflict and prefer harmony. Open and free communication will forestall the vast majority of disagreements and conflicts within the team. On the other hand, intellectual diversity generates creative solutions and innovation. Intellectual diversity is a mild form of conflict, and it usually results in innovative deliverables; and, therefore, it leads to increased team cohesiveness. It is crucial for the organization to foster an environment that promotes open and constructive discussion among team members. An enlightened and constructive approach is to view minor differences as a potentially positive component of the project team experience, and as a catalyst for innovation and creativity. This is particularly true if it is always controlled and not allowed to become a serious disagreement.
If minor differences in viewpoint are identified early and resolved properly, conflicts can be avoided. One must remember that poor communication will cause or exacerbate conflicts while negotiations and compromises will remedy or minimize major conflicts. If the intellectual diversity, with respect to people or task-related issues, is allowed to emerge as a serious disagreement and possibly evolve into major conflicts, project performance will suffer. In such cases, the project manager will be left with no option but to employ formal conflict-management techniques and intense negotiations.
Personal conflicts are somewhat common in traditional projects and virtual project teams that are formed without an effective supporting structure. These conflicts are hardly ever discovered before the occurrence of major project shortfalls (Table 6.4).
Notably, personal conflicts will manifest themselves as technical disagreements, or worse yet, as major technical conflicts. In turn, these technical conflicts will cause shortfalls in the schedule, budget, resource allocation, and legal concerns.
Conflict resolution will not remove the poor project performance up to the point of the discovery of the conflict; but rather it might minimize the future damage to the project progress. A sophisticated enterprise should have tools and procedures to resolve serious disagreements and major conflicts. Communication and team civility are somewhat akin to fire-prevention techniques while conflict management and negotiations can be regarded analogous to the fire-fighting techniques.
Table 6.4 Sources of conflict
People issues |
|
Technical issues |
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Project Team Performance Model
Through defining processes and roles, project teams can establish both predictability and openness with all the team activities. This environment will foster clarity and transparency in communication, which will in turn set the stage for a successful project (Figure 6.1).
Predictability, openness, and transparency are important factors in establishing trust among the project team members. Moreover, it is important to address personal and professional aspirations of team members by presenting opportunities to build competencies through mentoring, training, knowledge sharing, learning, and education. Addressing individual needs for growth promotes mutual trust and respect. Trust encourages project team members to collaborate, network, and innovate. By establishing trust, leaders can manage changes, mitigate conflicts—a deterrent to project performance—and transform project stakeholders into a cohesive project team. Given that establishing trust usually takes time and that projects are time bound, the task of building trust among team members becomes even more challenging. This model (Figure 6.1) facilitates the leadership behavior necessary to develop effective teams and to create synergy among the team members.
Productive Teams and Knowledge Management
Professional growth is a direct outcome of the learning that happens when teams work together harmoniously. Therefore, at the level of the individual team member, measures of team success could be professional growth as a result of knowledge gained by working with other team members collaboratively. The characteristics of productive and harmonious teams are low turnover and focus on individuals and tasks and work overall.
Figure 6.1 Team performance
It is widely recognized that knowledge is a key economic resource. Specifically, knowledge sharing and the resultant new knowledge creation and innovation are critical for organizations to become and remain competitive. Projects in general and global projects in particular provide opportunities to learn from each other and enhance knowledge sharing.
Learning from each other to enhance the capabilities of the enterprise and at individual levels is desired for potential growth opportunities. However, knowledge sharing in international collaborations and global projects is not without pitfalls. From an enterprise standpoint, organizational knowledge that is proprietary—a critical resource for creating and sustaining competitive advantage as competitors cannot easily replicate it—will no longer be confined within the organization. From an individual standpoint, businesses would not like to share proprietary knowledge unless the rewards outweigh the perceived value of the knowledge. Thus, it becomes a challenge to retain the competitive edge of organizations while participating in global projects. Organizations will have to make the distinction between the core competitive knowledge that needs to be retained and other relevant knowledge that is necessary to share for effective collaboration and successful completion of global projects. The project manager and project teams must recognize this distinction in sharing knowledge.
Research has shown that social capital is comprised of shared vision, trust, and social ties in an organization. Social capital plays an important role in knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer. Both are essential to promote synergy and team performance. However, trust cannot be built in a team if knowledge levels among its members are high, which is common when team members are diverse. On the other hand, the knowledge of the team members tends to improve communication, and the diversity of knowledge is likely to enhance creativity in problem solving. Needless to say, communication is critical for knowledge sharing, problem solving, and decision making in project teams. With the increase in team social capital, knowledge sharing becomes more effective and helps teams to be more productive.
Effective Use of Technology for Project Teams
Technology assumes importance in the context of project management due to the greater challenges in today’s technology-enabled work environment. Nowadays, technology tools are routinely used for collaboration, communication, and the deployment of project management practices. It is becoming common practice for even colocated project teams to use electronic medium for these purposes. Technology can play a major role in supporting project managers in leading projects effectively and efficiently.
In addition to capturing and storing information with easy access, technology can be used for developing and deploying project management processes and performance monitoring systems. Several project management software tools are available to manage project management tasks such as developing detailed schedules, estimating cost, allocating resources, assessing and managing risk, monitoring progress, and measuring project performance. Technology can efficiently and effectively help the project team accomplish the following project management functions:
Document the defined project roles and implement related processes.
Establish formal and consistent processes.
Communicate expectations of processes and roles.
Communicate openly among all the project team members, including virtual teams.
Monitor and manage project outcomes.
Specifically, technology plays a major role in helping the project manager to develop and formalize project processes and establish channels of open communication. With the appropriate use of technological tools, the project team can access organizational and tacit knowledge of past projects and historical data. This information can help project teams improve their project performance. For effective capturing of lessons learned, project managers must perform project reviews throughout the project management life cycle. Project managers should review project performance periodically during the project execution phase, and document important lessons learned when ideas and experiences are fresh in the minds of the project team members. This approach will help project managers capture both tacit and explicit knowledge that their project team members possess.
Project managers can achieve a higher level of continuous improvement in project performance by applying numerous technology tools throughout the project management life cycle:
Selecting projects by using knowledge-based decision systems consisting of quantitative and qualitative criteria
Developing a resource breakdown structure for the project environment and keeping it current by using resource cost information from historical project data and resource database systems
Developing project plans and scope with the help of historical data from knowledge repositories related to project plans and scope definitions.
Estimating—accurately and realistically—project costs by using historical cost and effort estimation and earned value data of past projects.
Developing a WBS by using standardized WBS packages maintained in database systems
Developing a project schedule by using historical schedule data and “After Action Review” information from knowledge repositories
Managing resources by using actual resource usage data from similar projects
Reducing risk
In essence, technology can help project managers improve the project processes that are used in order to manage project complexity, project integration, and resource utilization.
Going beyond these processes, technology can help project managers in managing teams effectively by promoting open communication, learning, knowledge transfer, and productivity. Project managers may also choose to develop electronic yellow pages that list project experts in specific interest groups, such as scope definition, scheduling, cost estimating, and risk management. Other technologies such as video conferences, the Internet, and an Intranet can help project managers lead projects using virtual project teams. These technologies help project managers communicate effectively with their virtual project teams and integrate project tasks effectively.
Technologies provide project management tools for planning and web-based support systems, which are essential for communication, conflict resolution, knowledge sharing, and integration of complex projects. The shift to sophisticated project management tools, driven by factors such as project complexities and diverse cultures requiring new management skills, is having a profound impact on project leadership. These results assume importance in the present context because methods of communication, decision making, soliciting commitment, and risk sharing shift the management style to a team-centered and self-directed form of project control.
Desirable Attributes of High-Performance Project Teams
By developing a team charter and adhering to it, a desirable outcome is facilitated that offers an environment of harmony, trust, teamwork, respect, dedication, and commitment among the project team members. Most of the characteristics of this work environment cannot be prescribed and such a team environment is the true indication of a productive and high-performing team. These attitudinal attributes are the subtle symptoms of a high-performing team, albeit possibly prompted and assisted by the procedures and guidelines prescribing the professional performance and personal interaction of the team members. Project success, project team success, and indicators of high performance are the desirable contributions of project team members and reflect a positive attitude of the team members.
The presence of the desirable attitudes and attributes of team members can be inferred, through the success of behavioral attributes. These behavioral attributes, such as communication, intellectual diversity, and conflict management, are relatively easy to measure. To carry that one step further, positive attitudinal attributes can also be inferred from the repeated successes of the project team in delivering project success and project team success. Unfortunately, direct testing and measurement of these attributes are difficult. The presence of positive attitudinal attributes can only be inferred based on the quality of the behavioral patterns.
A casual characterization of the presence of desirable attitudinal attributes, such as dedication to a project goal, would be to determine if, and to what extent, an individual team member is concerned with the success of the project team as a whole. The level of team spirit would be reflected by the team member’s response to a hypothetical situation: What would one of the team members do if he or she noticed a flaw in the project deliverable, a flaw that did not impact his or her individual deliverable, but a flaw that he or she could remedy quickly and easily?
Pure virtual teams are probably relatively rare, although pure traditional teams still exist in some project environments. It is always helpful to know where a project environment maps on the continuum between extreme virtual and extreme traditional in as much as the differences between the traditional and virtual teams must always be on the forefront of the considerations for the virtual team. The commonality between virtual and traditional teams should always be defined and enhanced. Furthermore, providing detailed and appropriate formalized procedures will ultimately result in bona fide team spirit and teamwork in both team structures (Table 6.5).
Table 6.5 Traditional versus virtual teams
Traditional teams |
|
Virtual teams |
|
Communication and information sharing through regular face-to-face communication are norms for traditional teams. By comparison, conceivably all of the interaction among virtual team members is conducted through means that are sometimes characterized as impersonal using media such as text-to-text, sometimes voice-to-voice, and rarely face-to-face methods. The bulk of the communication is done asynchronously using e-mails and other electronic media. However, occasionally, traditional projects use virtual team tools such as e-mails, portals, and teleconferencing to free up the team members from traveling to remote sites for project work. Furthermore, team members who live in reasonable proximity of one another form a virtual team for the purposes of convenience and operation efficiency.
Virtual teams rely only on written text for most of their communication. Therefore, to minimize misunderstanding, and more importantly to be mindful of personal feelings, there will have to be extensive formality in the conduct of most communication and reporting functions of virtual teams. Full development of positive attitudinal attributes will take longer to develop in virtual teams than it does in traditional teams.
Many of the people skills that work well with traditional teams do not work as well with virtual teams. Sometimes they do not work at all. The reason is simply that the bulk of the communication of the traditional teams takes place in a nonverbal form. Although, to some extent, one can capture the mood or feelings of a sender of the message using clues such as the choice of words or the tone of the language in written messages of virtual teams, it is difficult to establish effective communication quickly in the virtual environment. Therefore, traditional team-related processes might have to be modified for use with virtual teams. When developing, or adapting, processes for virtual teams, one would need to address how and when the traditional team procedures are suitable for virtual teams. Sometimes, new guidelines might have to be created for those issues that are specific to virtual teams.
The virtual team members must be continually aware and sensitive to the scarcity of the conventional human interaction in virtual teams. In virtual teams, there is no opportunity for a continuous stream of questions and answers as there is in traditional teams. Consequently, there is an extraordinary pressure, at least compared to the traditional teams, to be accurate, succinct, clear, and direct, when information is transmitted to other team members.
The mode of communication and tools of communication of the virtual team are commonly identified as the root causes of the success or failure of virtual teams. However, one of the frequent reasons for the failure of some of the virtual teams is not necessarily a shortfall in information flow or in technical competency and physical performance issues, but rather the fact the virtual teams are denied the bulk of the traditional modes of person-to-person communication. As it is for traditional teams, a comprehensive set of processes and guidelines for behavioral attributes and professional performance is the critical first step for virtual team norms.
Team Maturity
Project teams are composed of individuals and each member comes with a unique personality, and the motivation to join the team is different for different individuals. Each team member’s behavior and interactions toward the team can lead to positive or negative actions. The maturity level of the team would largely depend on bringing individuals together and aligning their actions to the team purpose by establishing team norms, processes, roles, and responsibilities (Table 6.6).
Organizations may choose to adapt the five levels of maturity shown in Table 6.6 or modify it to suit their specific needs. In general, the maturity level ranges from the lowest level of little teamwork and the presence of very few processes (level 0) to the presence of highest levels of cooperation, collaboration, trust, synergy, and innovation (level 4). The transition from level 0 to level 4 demands conscious effort and recognition of the importance of team development.
Team Performance Measurement System
The purpose of any team performance measurement system is to improve its productivity and effectiveness. The measurement system should not be such that team members attempt to optimize for metrics of performance thereby sacrificing quality. Therefore, performance measures should help the team and not necessarily just senior management. Furthermore, an empowered team must design its performance measurement system around a handful of measures and track and monitor progress against these measures.5
Table 6.6 Maturity levels of project teams
Level 0 |
Level 1 |
Level 2 |
Level 3 |
Level 4 |
Unfamiliarity Lack of role clarity No team procedures Individual focus Existence of conflicts Social loafing Leader-acknowledged Self-identity |
Relations with team Roles defined Communication process Mutual influence Conflicts addressed Social loafing addressed Leader accepted Social identity |
Identity with team Role performance Established processes Mutual respect Shared responsibility Importance to team Team charter defined Trust among the team Risk management Group emotion |
Team focus Role maturity Process maturity Team cohesion Mutual responsibility Importance to team Team charter defined Trust among the team Risk management Group mood |
Self-managed team Mutual support of roles Established processes Team cohesion Collaboration Cooperation Synergy Standard team charter Knowledge management Emotional intelligence |
Source: Adapted from Adams and Anantatmula (2010).
Questions:
Define and develop metrics of team performance.
Explain how management’s values impact the performance of the business.
Share an example of when you experienced both micromanagement and delegation.
Differentiate among project, proposal, and portfolio teams.
Describe the importance of a team charter.
What are the benefits of using a team charter?
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1 Part of this chapter is adopted from Successful Project Management Practices by Rad and Anantatmula (2010).
5 Meyer (2014).