Cows Gone Wild III was a huge success! But now the Ranch Hand Games team is gearing up for their next big hit. How are things shaping up?

Brian: Yeah, there’s no reason you need our resources dedicated to your project. We can get multiple projects done that way.

Mike: Come on, guys. You don’t really think that’s gonna work, do you?

Amy: Sure, why not?

Mike: We can’t just staff up as we go; that’s going to cause huge problems.

Brian: You’re overreacting, Mike. Look, I’m a team player, and I want to get the project done. You just tell me when you need someone off my team, and I’ll make sure you’ve got the developers and testers you need. What’s wrong with that?

Mike: Okay, so what if I need three developers starting tomorrow for the next two weeks. Can you do that?

Brian: Well, no, I’ve got a deadline on Friday. It’ll have to wait until next Monday. But that’s just a couple of days.

Mike: See, that’s what I’m talking about! A few days here, a few days there... if we have to wait a few days every time the team needs someone, we’ll totally blow the schedule.

You want to stay in control of your project team, right? But when you work in a matrixed organization, your team members don’t directly report to you. So how do you make sure you get the best people, and keep them motivated and productive? That’s what the four processes in Human Resource Management are for: guiding you through all the things you need to do to make sure you get everyone for your project when you need them.

Project teams don’t just assemble themselves spontaneously! It takes a lot of planning and guidance to get a team together, and that’s the idea behind the Develop Human Resource Plan process. Remember, in a matrixed organization your team doesn’t report directly to the project manager. You need to work with the functional managers to get you the team members that you need for your project... which means there’s a lot of information that you need to give to everyone so they know exactly who you need for your team.

Tools

Organization Charts and Position Descriptions tell everyone how your team is structured.

Networking means both formally and informally interacting with other people in your company and industry to stay on top of everything.

Note

This is a lot like the other planning processes you’ve seen already! You start with your project plan and what you know about your company, and you come up with a plan.

Organizational theory is where you use proven principles to guide your decisions.

Sharpen your pencil Solution

The inputs, tools and techniques, and outputs of Develop Human Resource Plan should seem pretty familiar! Write down what you think you’d use each of them for. Notice that there are a few that you haven’t seen before—take an educated guess at those.

You need two charts because you have two “organizations.”

One organization is the whole company—along with any subcontractors or consultants you’ve got access to for your project team. The other organization is just the people who are on the team. The team might have people from different groups in your company, and they need to know how they interact. That’s why you create a chart just for the team.

The Project Organization Chart shows how your team members relate with each other.

This might include people or relationships that may not necessarily show up on a company organization chart. If you’ve got a team built from multiple consultants and subcontractors, this chart will be the only place where everyone is listed at once.

Roles and Responsibilities show who’s responsible for what.

It’s really common to see the roles and responsibilities for a project written out as a RACI matrix, which is just a table that lists the role or people on the top; the specific activities, work, or responsibilities down the side; and indicates the level of responsibility that each person or role has for each of the activities or responsibilities. (RACI stands for “Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed.”)

An important component of the Human Resource Plan is the Staffing Management Plan. It tells you everything that you need in order to build your team, keep them motivated, and manage them to resolve conflicts and get the work done.

Your Human Resource Plan is in place, your project is ready to roll, and now it’s time to begin the actual project work! You need your team, and the way you bring them on board is the Acquire Project Team process.

This is where you negotiate with functional managers for your project team members. You need the right people for the project, and you’ve done all the prep work to figure out who you need and when you need them. So now it’s time to go get your team!

Human Resourcecross

Take some time to sit back and give your right brain something to do. It’s your standard crossword; all of the solution words are from this chapter.

Answers in Human Resourcecross Solution.

Across

Down

1. What you provide for a human resource in order to ensure he or she has the skills necessary to do the project. 6. The resource __________ is a vertical bar chart in the staffing management plan that tells you the type and number of resources you need. 8. This is a great tool for communicating roles and responsibilities. 9. The ______ effect causes people with technical expertise to be put in positions for which they’re unqualified. 10. You use _________ teams when your team members don’t all work in the same location. 11. The first Human Resource Management process you perform is Human Resource _________. 12. __________ availability is an output that describes when each team member will be available to your project.

2. The most important tool in Acquire Project Team. 3. The ___________ Organization Chart shows only the people assigned to your team, including consultants and subcontractors. 4. The Manage Project Team process is part of the _________ process group. 5. This kind of chart tells you how team members relate to each other in your company. 7. The main output of the Acquire Project Team process is _________ assignments. 8. A great way to motivate your team.

Amy: I haven’t noticed anything. What’s up?

Mike: Well, maybe it’s nothing, but a couple of the design team members have been missing some deadlines. Nothing major, but it’s starting to concern me.

Amy: Well, okay. I can keep an eye on them.

Mike: That’s not all. One of them hasn’t been replying to emails at all, and another scheduled a vacation right in the middle of a huge deadline week. I think we may have a real motivation problem.

Amy: You’re right, that sounds pretty bad. What can I do about it?

Mike: Well, I built a discretionary bonus budget into the plan.

Amy: Right, that $2,500. But should we really be talking about giving bonuses? I thought these were underperformers. Shouldn’t we only reward good behavior?

Mike: Well, right, but if we tie the bonus to meeting an aggressive deadline or high quality standards, it might help get them energized again.

Amy: We can give it a shot, but I’m skeptical.

The Develop Project Team process is the most important one in Human Resource Management. It’s the one where you make sure your team is motivated and well-managed—and those are some of the most important things that project managers do! You do it throughout the entire Executing phase of the project, because you need to keep your team moving towards the goal.

How do you keep your team motivated and up and running? With the tools and techniques for Develop Project Team, that’s how. When you’re working with your team, you need to be a leader. That means setting the rules for how people interact with each other, making sure they have the skills they need, setting up a good working environment, and keeping them motivated.

Knowing all of the tools and techniques in the PMBOK® Guide will help you to know a lot about your project, but the way you help your team to get the job done is just as important as the steps you take to get it done.

Leadership is all about giving the team a goal to shoot for and helping them to see the value in the work they are doing. It’s not enough to have a team know the end product that they’re buiilding; they need to understand the value that that product is going to bring to the company. A project manager needs to constantly remind the team of the vision they’re working toward and make decisions to help keep the team on track toward it.

Team-building involves helping your team learn to depend on each other and trust each other. As a project maanger, it’s your job to help the team come to an understanding about how they’ll communicate with each other and stay motivated when things go wrong. If you’re open about your decision-making processes and communicate often about what you’re doing, you can help your team to bond with each other. Some people think of team building as going out for pizzas after work, but it’s more about how you lead, and how you help to create an environment where your team members can trust each other.

Motivation demonstrates to your team the value that the project has for them. It includes making sure that people are compensated and rewarded financially for their work. But that’s not the most the only facet of team motivation that you need to be concerned with. Your team also needs to know how they tasks they’re doing contribute to project success and what’s in it for them. Motivating your team is about helping them to be satisfied with the the job they’re doing, recognizing them when they do a good job, and keeping them challenged with new and different problems.

Communication is a constant concern when you’re leading a team. It’s not enough to make the best decisions to get your project done, you’ve got to make sure that everybody in the team knows why you’re making them and feels like you’re being open and honest about what’s motivating every decision you make. If the people on your team feel like they’re always getting the information they need from you and that they’re never in the dark, they’ll be able to trust you and each other more.

Influencing is all about using your relationships with the people on your team to get them to cooperate in making good decisions for the project. When you lead by example, you show your team how you want them to behave by doing it. It may seem subtle, but the way you work as a project manager can set the standard for your teammates. Collaborating with your team on the best way of working through your project is a really effective way of making sure that the team members gel, and know that they can rely on each other.

Political and Cultural Awareness means knowing the people on your team and understanding their backgrounds. Since projects sometimes span more than one culture, it’s important to take the time to understand the similarities and differences in the working environments across the project team. It’s equally important to communicate with your team members and understand what motivates them.

Decision-Making is how you handle the issues that come up when you’re working through your project. There are a few basic techniques for decision making that you’ll use:

Negotiation helps people the on your team come to an agreement about how to work together. It’s important when your negotiating to listen to both parties in negotiation and to make sure that you make it clear when concessions are made. That should everyone see both sides of the issue and know that you’re negotiating a fair resolution to the issue.

You’ve seen tools and techniques that help you set up a great environment for your team to succeed, but you need more than that to get them through a tough project. You need leadership skills, those “soft skills” you use to influence your team and keep them directed toward the project’s goals.

You’re right, it can’t. What the PMP® exam can quiz you on is your knowledge of leadership skills. There’s been a lot of research on how people wield power in companies. The PMP exam concentrates on research done by two social psychology researchers named French and Raven who came up with five different kinds of power that people use to influence others.

The five kinds of power

There are five kinds of power that a project manager typically uses on a project. The first is called legitimate power, which is what you use when you assign work to someone who reports to you.

Note

When you’re someone’s boss, you have legitimate power to tell them what to do. But when you work in a matrixed organization, you don’t have direct reports! So you’ll need to use the other kinds of power to influence your team.

Reward power is what you have when you can award a bonus or another kind of reward in order to motivate team members. Always make sure that rewards are fair—you don’t want to single out one person who is eligible for a reward without giving others a chance at it! And rewards work best when they’re tied to specific goals or project priorities.

Expert power means that the team respects you for your expertise in a specific area, and gives you credibility because of that. Think about it: a team of programmers is more likely to respect you and do what you ask them to do if they know that you’re an accomplished software engineer!

Note

Making everyone compete for one single reward isn’t fair—it’s actually demotivating to force people to compete for an arbitrary prize.

Referent power means that people admire you, are loyal to you, and want to do what you do because you’re part of the cool crowd. Often, a project manager might wield referent power because he’s trusted by people in authority, and others perceive him as associated with success.

Punishment power is exactly what it sounds like—you correct a team member for poor behavior. Always remember to do this one-on-one and in private! Punishing someone in front of peers or superiors is extremely embarrassing, and will be really counterproductive.

What’s My Purpose

Match each form of power to the scenario where it’s being used.

Legitimate Power	“We’re not meeting our quality standards, and until we do we’re going to have to work weekends.”
Reward Power	A project manager sets up an “Accolade Wall” and posts awards for team members who come in ahead of schedule.
Expert Power	Everyone always does what Shelly says because everyone knows that senior management loves her.
Referent Power	A functional manager assigns a tester to work on the project manager’s team.
Punishment Power	The programmers always listen to the team lead because he’s a really good software architect.

Answers in Exercise Solution.

No matter how good your “soft skills” are, if your team has a lousy work environment, they’re going to have a hard time getting the project done. Luckily, there’s been research done over the years to figure out exactly what makes a good working environment. For the PMP exam, you’ll be expected to be familiar with the most popular theories of motivation and organization.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs says that people have needs, and until the lower ones are satisfied they won’t even begin to think about the higher ones.

Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory

Sure, you love being a project manager. But would you do the job if you weren’t getting a paycheck? Of course not!

What Herzberg figured out was that you need things like good working conditions, a satisfying personal life, and good relations with your boss and coworkers—stuff he called “hygiene factors.” They don’t motivate you, but you need them before you can be motivated. Until you have them, you don’t really care about “motivation factors” like achievement, recognition, personal growth, or career advancement.

McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y

McGregor tells us that there are two kinds of managers: ones who assume that everyone on the team is selfish and unmotivated, and ones who trust their team to do a good job. He calls the kind of manager who distrusts the team a “Theory X” manager, and the kind who trusts them a “Theory Y” manager. You could get exam questions where the answer could be “Theory X” or “Theory Y”—or both!

Expectancy Theory says that you need to give people an expectation of a reward in order to motivate them—but this only works if that award is achievable. If everyone knows the award is either worthless or impossible to achieve, it will actually demotivate them!

McClelland’s Achievement Theory says that people need achievement, power, and affiliation to be motivated. Achievement is when someone performs well and is recognized for it. Power means he or she has a lot of control or influence in the company. And someone feels a strong sense of affiliation from being a part of a working team and having good relationships with coworkers.

There’s a process for a team to get from a group of strangers to a group that creates something good together, that’s what the stages of team development are all about.

Although this is the normal progression, it’s possible that the team can get stuck in any one of the stages. One big contribution you can make, as the Project Manager, is to help the team get through the initial Storming phase and into Norming and Performing. It’s important to keep in mind that people have a tough time creating team bonds initially, and to try to use your soft skills to help the team to progress through the stages quickly.

There are two outputs of Develop Project Team. One is the Team Performance Assessment. Developing the project team means working with them to keep everyone motivated, and training them to improve their skills. The other is updates to your company’s Enterprise Environmental Factors, to update your company’s personnel records.

Cows Gone Wild IV Team Performance Assessment

Competencies / Skills improvements

Developers: attended three-day training course on new vector graphics coding techniques. Designers: brought in industrial design professor from Ivy College to hold seminar on design techniques.

Note

The project manager should look at how the team’s skill set has improved, and make sure it’s documented here.

Team Performance

There’s been a marked improvement in team cohesion, and it’s resulted in a lower defect rate. We’ve awarded 50% of our $2,500 bonus budget.

Note

Has the team performance improved? Are the motivational techniques working? If so, that goes here!

Turnover Rate

Two designers and one developer have left the team, which is an improvement from CGW III.

Note

You can measure how motivated and happy the team is by keeping an eye on the turnover rate.

Amy: Look, we’ve been over this, Brian. My team is working on level design, and that’s the priority right now.

Brian: Mike, is that true?

Mike: I checked the schedule, and all three of those things are part of the current activity. It’s not really clear which one of them is the priority.

Brian: Look, my team will be halted if we don’t get those models and textures.

Amy: Come on, Brian. You guys have a whole bunch of unit tests that you can write, and I know you’re a week behind on code reviews. Can’t you just work on those in the meantime?

Brian: My team’s been reviewing code for two weeks now. They need a break!

Amy: Aha! So it’s not really that you’re going to fall behind if you don’t get the textures immediately.

Brian: Well, no, but I’ll be dealing with a team that has motivation problems. And I’m the one who has to clean up that mess!

Mike: OK, hold on, guys. Let’s see if we can work this out.

Amy: I don’t see what there is to work out. He’s being unreasonable.

Wouldn’t it be great if your team members never had any conflicts? Well, we all know that conflicts are a fact of life in any project. A good project manager knows how to handle conflicts so they don’t delay or damage the project. And that’s what the Manage Project Team process is about.

Tools

Conflict management is one of the most important tools in Manage Project Team, because it’s where you resolve conflicts between people.

Issue logs are really useful for keeping track of any issue, problem or conflict that happens throughout the project. As each issue is resolved, write down the resolution.

Project performance appraisals means looking at each person’s work and assessing his or her performance.

Interpersonal skills are all about helping the people on your team to solve problems.

Observation and conversation are how you communicate to manage your team.

It’s probably no surprise that over half of conflicts come from priorities, schedules, and people. That’s why so many of the processes you’re learning about are focused on preventing conflicts. Ground rules, good planning practices, and pretty much anything that has to do with communication are all there to prevent the most common reasons that conflicts happen.

When you’re managing a project, you depend on people to get the work done. But when they have any sort of conflict, your project can grind to a halt... and you’re the one who has to face the music when it causes delays and costs money! Since you’re on the hook when a conflict threatens your project, you’re the one who has to resolve it. Luckily, there are some techniques for getting your conflicts resolved.

Confronting—or problem-solving—is the most effective way to resolve a conflict. When you confront the source of the conflict head-on and work with everyone to find a solution that actually fixes the reason that conflicts happen, then the problem is most likely to go away and never come back!

Compromise sounds good, doesn’t it? But hold on a second—when two people compromise, it means that each person gives up something. That’s why a lot of people call a compromise a “lose-lose” solution.

Collaborating means working with other people to make sure that their viewpoints and perspectives are taken into acount. It’s a great way to get a real commitment from everyone.

Smoothing is what you’re doing when you try to play down the problem and make it seem like it’s not so bad. It’s a temporary solution, but sometimes you need to do it to keep tempers from flaring and give people some space to step back and really figure out what’s going on.

Forcing means putting your foot down and making a decision. One person wins, one person loses, and that’s the end of that.

Withdrawal doesn’t do much good for anyone. It’s when people get so frustrated, angry, or disgusted that they just walk away from the argument. It’s almost always counterproductive. If someone withdraws from a problem before it’s resolved, it won’t go away—and your project will suffer.

No! Confrontation is just another name for problem-solving, because you solve a problem by confronting it head-on, doing your research, and fixing whatever is causing it. If you always remember to:

...it will really help you through a bunch of questions on the exam!

The odds were against Mike—he had to fight for a whole new team, keep them motivated, and solve some pretty serious problems. But he followed his plan, got a great team together, kept them on track, and got the product out the door!