Recruiting the Project Team

After some 40 years of practicing project management, I finally had a project management assignment that allowed me to select exactly the team I wanted. My selection received the highest priority, and I got everyone I requested — 100-percent assignment from everyone. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. What a pleasure it was to work with a team whose members were all known to me and with whom I had worked with on previous projects. They were people who made a commitment and stuck to it. You could go the bank with their commitment and know that it was sound. With that team it is no surprise that the project finished ahead of schedule and under budget. There was no staff turnover during the 27-month project. I don't expect to ever have that ideal situation again.

The reality is that most likely you will inherit team members because they are available. (I've often wondered if availability is a skill.) So this chapter starts by discussing the realities of recruiting a project team.

Project plans and their execution are only as successful as the manager and team who implement them. Building effective teams is as much an art as it is a science.

When recruiting and building an effective team, you must consider not only the technical skills of each person but also the critical roles and chemistry that must exist between and among the project manager and the team members. The selection of you as the project manager and your team members will not be perfect — there are always risks with any personnel decision.

In addition to choosing you as the project manager the project team will have two or three separate components. Clients (internal or external to the company) and the core team are required. Contract team members are required only when the project outsources segments of the project work. The project team has the following three separate components:

• Core team
• Client team
• Contract team

Be aware of the characteristics that should be part of an effective project team. The following sections describe the responsibilities of each of the three components of the project team. Also provided are a checklist that should assist you in your selection process and guidelines for organizing the project in an organization.

Core Team Members

Core team members are with the project from cradle to grave. They typically have a major role to play in the project and bring a skill set that has broad applicability across the range of work undertaken in the project. They might also have responsibility for key tasks or sets of tasks in the project.

Although the ideal assignment for Agile Project Management (APM) and Extreme Project Management (xPM) projects is full-time, that is rarely the case in today's business environment. In matrix organizations, professional staff can be assigned to more than one project at a time. This case is especially true when a staff member possesses a skill not commonly found in the staff. They will be assigned to several projects concurrently. A core team member will have some percentage of his or her time allocated to the project — it is not likely you will get them full-time.

When to Select the Core Team Members

Because the core team will be needed for the Joint Project Planning Session (JPPS), its members should be identified as early as possible. The core team is usually identified at the beginning of the scoping phase. This means that the members can participate in the early definition and planning of the project.

Selection Criteria

Because of the downsizing, rightsizing, and capsizing going on in corporate America, much of the responsibility for choosing core team members has been designated to the project manager. However, even if you're given this responsibility as the project manager, you may have little or no latitude in picking the individuals who you would like on your core team. This problem can be caused by one of the following situations:

• Most organizations have a very aggressive portfolio of projects with constantly changing priorities and requirements.
• The individual you want already has such a heavy workload that joining yet another team is not an option.
• Staff turnover, especially among highly technical and in high demand professionals, is out of control in many organizations. Because of the high demand, the turnover among these professionals is also high.

All of these situations make it difficult for the project manager to select the core dream team. For example, suppose a project manager has a choice between the A Team and the B Team. The A Team is the most skilled in a particular technology. Its members are the company's experts. Conversely, the B Team is made up of individuals who would like to be on the A Team but just don't have the requisite experience and skills. The project manager would like to have all A Team members on the core team but realizes that this is just not going to happen. Even a suggestion of such a core team would be immediately rejected by the managers of such highly skilled professionals. The politically savvy project manager would determine the project work that must have an A Team member and the project work that could get done with a B Team member, and then negotiate accordingly with the managers of these potential team members.

The project manager will have to pick his or her battles carefully, because he or she may want the A Team for critical-path tasks, high-risk tasks, and high-business-value projects, and accept the B Team for tasks and projects of lesser criticality. Be ready to horse trade between projects, too. Give the resource managers an opportunity to use non–critical path tasks as on-the-job training for their staff. Remember that they have as many staff development and deployment problems as you have project planning and scheduling problems. Trading a favor of staff development for an A Team member may be a good strategy.

I identified a list of characteristics that many project managers have offered as successful core team characteristics as a result of my project management consulting work. The list of characteristics follows shortly. For the most part, these characteristics are observed in individuals based on their experiences and the testimony of those who have worked with them. Typically, the presence or absence of these characteristics cannot be determined through interviews.

In many cases, the project manager must take a calculated risk that the team member possesses these characteristics even though the individual has not previously demonstrated that he or she has them. It will become obvious very quickly whether or not the individual possesses these characteristics. If not, and if those characteristics are critical to the team member's role in the project, the project manager or the team member's line manager will have to correct the team member's behavior.

The following characteristics have been identified by project managers as being the most important for core team members to possess:

Client Team

You may have no choice about who the client assigns to your team. Be cautious, however, that individuals might get this assignment merely because they aren't too busy back in their home departments. There may be a good reason why they weren't too busy. (I'll let you guess why that might be.)

When to Select the Client Team

These people need to be assigned in time to participate in the Project Kick-Off Meeting. Many of them might have been part of the JPPS, and that would be a bonus. They are probably assigned to the project for some percentage of their time rather than full time. In some cases, they might join the team when work on their area of responsibility is being done. If that is the case, they should still be identified along with others and kept informed of project status.

Selection Criteria

All you will likely be able to do is profile the skills and experiences of the client team members you will need. Perhaps specification by position title would be preferred by both the client and the project manager. Also, you would like to have client members with some decision-making authority. If not, the client members will have to return to their supervisor or manager for decisions. That can slow project progress.

Contract Team Members

The business-to-business environment is changing, and many changes are permanent. Organizations are routinely outsourcing processes that are not part of their core business or core expertise. As a result, project managers have been forced to use contract team members instead of their company's own employees for one or both of the following reasons:

• Shortage of staff
• Shortage of skills

These shortages have made it possible for a whole new type of business to grow — tech-temps is the name I associate with this new business opportunity. The day of the small contractor and niche market player is here to stay. To the project manager, this creates the need to effectively manage a team whose membership will probably include outside contractors. Some may be with the project for only a short time. Others may be no different from full-time core team members except that they are not company employees.

Typically, contract team members are available to work on the project for only short periods of time. A contract team member may possess a skill that is needed for just a brief time, and he or she is assigned to the project for that time only. As soon as the assigned task is completed, he or she leaves the project.

Implications of Adding Contract Team Members

Contract team members present the project manager with a number of challenges. In most systems development efforts, it is unlikely that professionals would be assigned full-time to the project team. Rather, people will join the project team only for the period of time during which their particular expertise is needed. The project manager must be aware of the implications to the project when contract professionals are used, which may include the following:

• There may be little or no variance in the time contracted team members are available, so the tasks on which they work must remain on schedule.
• They must be briefed on their role in the project and how their task relates to other tasks in the project.
• Commitment of contract members is typically a problem because their priorities probably lie elsewhere.
• Quality of work may be an issue because of poor levels of commitment. They just want to get the job done and get on with their next assignment. Often anything will do.
• Contract team members will often require more supervision than core team members.

Selection Criteria

If as a project manager, you've made the decision to buy rather than build a project team, you must determine who will get your business. Contract team members are usually employed or represented by agencies that cater to technical professionals who prefer freelancing to full-time employment. These professionals are available for short-term assignments in their area of specialization. To employ these professionals, you must make the following decisions: what process you're going to follow, who should be invited to submit information, and how you're going to evaluate the information received. The evaluation often takes the form of a score sheet. The score sheet contains questions grouped by major features and functions, with weights attached to each answer. A single numeric score is then calculated to rank vendor responses. Nonquantitative data such as client relations and client service are also collected from reference accounts provided by the vendor.

Here are the steps you might take as a project manager to engage the services of a contract team member:

1. Identify the types of skills and the number of personnel needed, and the time frame within which they will be required.
2. Identify a list of companies that will be invited to submit a proposal.
3. Write the request for proposal (RFP).
4. Establish the criteria for evaluating responses and selecting the vendor(s).
5. Distribute the RFP.
6. Evaluate the responses.
7. Reduce the list of vendors to a few who will be invited on site to make a formal presentation.
8. Conduct the on-site presentations.
9. Choose the final vendor(s), and write and sign the contract.

Balancing a Team

Balance is a critical success factor for any team that hopes to successfully complete its project. There are several ways to measure balance and several characteristics of the team that have been used to define balance. Take a simple example — learning styles. Learning styles are measured using an instrument, the Learning Styles Inventory (LSI), which was developed by David Kolb in 1981. Kolb identifies the following four learning styles:

• Assimilating
• Diverging
• Accommodating
• Converging

Assimilating

Assimilators are people who excel at collecting and representing data in crisp logical form. They are focused on ideas and concepts, rather than people. These individuals like to put data and information together into models that explain the situation from a larger perspective. As a result, they are more interested in something making sense logically than they are in any practical value. They are not results-oriented people. These types of individuals typically specialize in various technical fields, such as software developers.

Diverging

These individuals like to look at alternatives and view the situation from a variety of perspectives. They would rather observe than take action. Divergers like brainstorming, and they generally have a broad range of interests and like gathering and analyzing information. On a project team, these people will often display outside-of-the-box thinking and offer suggestions for approaches other than those that have already been identified.

Accommodating

These individuals are results-oriented and want to put things into practice. They are adaptive and can easily change with the circumstances. Accommodators are people persons. They are strong at implementation and hands-on tasks and are good team players. They tend to be action-oriented and more spontaneous than logical. As problem solvers, they rely on people for input, rather than on any technical analysis. On the project team, you can count on these people to help foster a strong sense of teamwork and to facilitate the coordination of team members. They are often the peacekeepers as well.

Converging

These individuals like to assemble information in order to solve problems. Convergers are the solution finders but not the solution implementers. Their strength lies in their ability to take concepts, models, and ideas and turn them into practical use. They are not particularly people-oriented and would rather work with technical tasks and problems. They are good at picking the best option among a number of alternatives. On the project team, these type of individuals will be the results-oriented members. They will drive the team into action by helping it focus on which approach to a situation is best and then mobilizing the team into action.

Now suppose you have a team that is loaded with convergers and does not have a single diverger among its members. What do you think might happen? With no one on the team to encourage looking for alternatives (the role of the diverger), you would very likely have a rush to judgment, or “group think,” as the convergers press the team into action. I have personally witnessed many situations where a single approach to a problem is presented, and the convergers on the team aggressively suggest that the team go forward with the single proposed solution without even considering whether there is an alternative. Teams involved in high-technology projects are likely to display this behavior.

A team that has balanced learning styles among its members is a team that is prepared to do a very good job at solving problems and making decisions.

Developing a Team Deployment Strategy

Having balance on the team in all of the characteristics discussed in the previous section is certainly a worthy goal, but it is a goal not likely to be reached. In reality, the team is formed more according to availability than to any need to balance its membership. As a result, teams are not balanced, but they are the team nevertheless. What's a project manager to do?

First of all, the project manager had better know where the imbalance exists. What characteristics does the team have? Where are its strengths and where are its weaknesses? For example, suppose a confrontation has arisen with the client. I would much rather send an accommodator than a converger to resolve the conflict. However, there might not be an accommodator on the team. Teams are most likely to be formed and when a conflict situation arises the imbalances are discovered.

The project manager needs to determine which team members have a greater likelihood of success on which types of work assignments. Build the strategy. If you still have gaping holes, you need a team development plan. That is the topic of the next section.

Developing a Team Development Plan

After you've assembled your team and assessed each member's characteristics, you may discover several areas in which the team is noticeably weak. Although your job as project manager is not to be a career or professional development manager of the team members, you still have to get the project done, and any imbalance on the team can be a barrier to your success. As project manager, identify the high-risk areas that are not covered by at least one team member who can deal with those types of risks. As part of your risk management plan, put a development plan in place for selected members of the team.

What form might that development plan take? Here are two possibilities:

• You might want to use a conflict-resolution management behavior called masked behavior. Briefly, it means that you find the person on your team whose normal behavior is as close as possible to the missing behavior. That person then role-plays as though his or her normal behavior were the missing behavior.
• You might consider sensitivity training for all or some of the team. That training involves creating an awareness of the behavior that is lacking and practicing it under supervision. For example, technology professionals are generally not very good people persons. They often lack the traits of an accommodator. Sensitivity training for these team members might include listening skills, learning how to be a team player, acceptance of change, diversity training, and other related interpersonal skills training.