Week 8 - HR Mgmt

2. Acquiring the Project Team Getting & Assigning People to the Project Team

Acquiring qualified IT staff at the right time is critical. Project managers must work with others in their firms to assign particular personnel to their projects, or to acquire needed human resources to staff their projects. Project managers with strong influencing and negotiating skills are often good at getting internal people to work on their projects. The HR department can help in hiring subcontractors or new employees. Project managers must address issues of resource utilization and availability.

Thamhain and Wilemon How to Influence Projects ...

Authority: The legitimate hierarchical right to issue orders. Assignment: Project manager's perceived ability to influence a persons' later work assignments. Budget: Project manager's perceived ability to authorize others' use of discretionary funds. Promotion: The ability to improve a worker's position. Money: The ability to increase a worker's pay and benefits. Penalty: Project manager's ability to cause punishment. Work challenge: The ability to assign work that capitalizes on a worker's enjoyment of doing a particular task. Expertise: Project manager's perceived special knowledge that others deem important. Friendship: The ability to establish friendly personal relationships between the project manager and others.

General Advice on Teams

Be patient and kind with your team. Fix the problem instead of blaming people. Establish regular, effective meetings. Allow time for teams to go through the basic team-building stages. Limit the size of work teams to three to seven members. Plan some social activities to help project team members and other stakeholders get to know each other better. Emphasize team identity Nurture team members and encourage them to help each other. Take additional actions to work with virtual team members. Acknowledge accomplishments

MBTI Dimensions

Extrovert / Introvert attuned to the outside world, draw energy from others / inner-directed, deep thinker, draw energy from themselves Sensation / Intuition like facts, details, and reality, and describe themselves as practical / imaginative, attentive to hunches, like to massage data and consider the possibilities Thinking / Feeling objective and logical / subjective and personal Judgment / Perception like closure and task completion, establish deadlines and take them seriously, opinionated and quick to make judgments / prefer to keep things open and flexible, do not feel work must be done before play, defer judgment till more information available

Tuckman Model of Team Development

Forming Storming Norming Performing Adjourning

Responsibility Assignment Matrix

From the OBS we develop... A responsibility assignment matrix (RAM) that: Assigns detailed work activities: i.e. map the work of the project (from the WBS), to the organizations/ teams/individuals responsible for performing the work (i.e. in the OBS). Define project roles and responsibilities i.e. who is accountable vs who simply participates Can also use RACI charts that show Responsibility, Accountability, Consultation, and Informed roles

Empathetic Listening and Rapport

Good project managers are empathic listeners; they listen with the intent to understand Before you can communicate with others, you have to have rapport, a relation of harmony, conformity, accord, or affinity Mirroring is the matching of certain behaviors of the other person, a technique to help establish rapport IT professionals need to develop empathic listening and other people skills to improve relationships with users and other stakeholders

1. Human Resource Planning

HR planning is about identifying and documenting project roles, responsibilities and reporting relationships. Variety of tools and techniques, including a responsibility assignment matrix (RAM) a matrix that maps the work of the project, as described in the WBS, to the people responsible for performing the work.

Project HR Management Processes

Human resource planning: Identifying and documenting project roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships. Acquiring the project team: Getting the needed personnel assigned to and working on the project. Developing the project team: Building individual and group skills to enhance project performance. Managing the project team: Tracking team member performance, motivating team members, providing timely feedback, resolving issues and conflicts, and coordinating changes to help enhance project performance.

Influence - Power

Influence is linked to Power Power is the potential ability to influence behavior to get people to do things they would not otherwise do. Types of power include: Coercive power: punishment, threats Legitimate power: position/authority Expert power: knowledge and expertise Reward power: incentives Referent power: charisma  regard

Many Theories of Motivation

Intrinsic motivation about enjoyment - people participate in an activity for their own enjoyment (i.e. has hedonic value). Extrinsic motivation causes people to do something for a reward or to avoid a penalty (i.e. has utilitarian value) Maslow's hierarchy of needs Herzberg's motivational and hygiene factors McClelland's acquired-needs theory McGregor's Theory X, Theory Y and Ouchi's Theory Z Hackman & Oldham's job characteristics model Locke's goal setting theory

What is Project HR Management?

It is about making the most effective use of the people involved with a project People determine the success and failure of a project: "People are our most important asset." How does a PM influence the behavior and actions of project team members? Some keys to managing people ... Motivation theories Influence and Power Effectiveness

Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

MBTI is a popular tool for determining personality preferences and helping teammates understand each other: why do people behave as they do? Four dimensions include: Extrovert/Introvert (E/I) Sensation/Intuition (S/N) Thinking/Feeling (T/F) Judgment/Perception (J/P)

Motivation

Motivation: Psychological processes that cause the arousal, direction, and persistence of voluntary actions that are goal directed Behavior is purposive, rather than random (people do things for a reason). Motivation arouses people to do something (people are unlikely to change a behavior unless motivated to do so). Motivation causes people to focus on a desired goal. Motivation fuels the persistence needed to sustain effort on a task.

Herzberg Motivational & Hygiene Factors

Motivational factors: Achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, advancement, and growth. These factors produce job satisfaction. Hygiene factors: Larger salaries, more supervision, and a more attractive work environment, computers & other equipment, health benefits, training. These factors cause dissatisfaction if not present, but do not motivate workers to do more.

Tools & Techniques for Managing Project Teams

Observation and conversation Project performance appraisals Conflict management Issue logs

Five Dysfunctions of Teams

Patrick Lencioni, says that "Teamwork remains the one sustainable competitive advantage that has been largely untapped"* The five dysfunctions of teams are: Absence of trust Fear of conflict Lack of commitment Avoidance of accountability Inattention to results

Social Styles Profile

People are perceived as behaving primarily in one of four zones, based on their assertiveness and responsiveness: Drivers Expressives Analyticals Amiables People on opposite corners (drivers and amiables, analyticals and expressives) may have difficulty getting along. (See Schwalbe Fig 9-10)

Summary

Project human resource management includes the processes required to make the most effective use of the people involved with a project: Human resource planning Acquiring the project team Developing the project team Managing the project team. Effective project managers: plan resource needs and utilize resources efficiently treat people with consideration and respect use a range of strategies to motivate people learn how to influence understand the communication needs of different people build high-performing teams

Covey - Improving Effectiveness

Project managers can apply Covey's 7 habits to improve effectiveness on projects Be proactive Begin with the end in mind Put first things first Think win/win Seek first to understand, then to be understood Synergize Sharpen the saw

4. Managing the Project Team

Project managers must lead their teams in performing various project activities. Project managers must use their soft skills to find the best ways to motivate and manage each team member. After assessing team performance and related information, the PM must decide: If changes should be requested to the project. If corrective or preventive actions should be recommended. If updates are needed to the project management plan or organizational process assets.

Ways to Influence that Help and Hurt Projects

Projects are more likely to succeed when project managers influence people using: Expertise Work challenge Projects are more likely to fail when project managers rely too heavily on: Authority Money Penalty

Resource Leveling

Resource leveling: a technique for resolving resource conflicts by delaying (or shuffling) tasks. Purpose: to create a smoother distribution of resource use and reduce overallocation most often by using areas of slack and float. The goal is to minimize period-by-period variations in resource loading by shifting tasks within their slack allowances. It is the process of moving tasks around to accommodate limited resources.

Resource Loading

Resource loading: the amount of individual resources an existing schedule requires during specific time periods. Helps project managers develop a general understanding of the demands a project will make on the organization's resources and individual people's schedules. Resource Histograms show resource loading Overallocation: more resources than are available are assigned to perform work at a given time.

So, How to Motivate?

Satisfy basic individual needs. Provide clear, consistent goals & performance expectations. Provide feedback. Empower individuals through job design (e.g., job rotation, job characteristics, job enrichment). Build achievement, challenge, and stimulating work into jobs. Foster perceived equity, fairness, and justice. Establish and maintain reward and recognition systems that build pride, self-esteem, and validate high performance.

McClelland Acquired-Needs Theory

Specific needs are acquired or learned over time and are shaped by life experiences. Main categories of acquired needs are: Achievement (nAch): People with a high need for achievement like challenging projects with attainable goals and lots of feedback. Affiliation (nAff): People with high need for affiliation desire harmonious relationships and need to feel accepted by others, so managers should try to create a cooperative work environment for them. Power (nPow): People with a need for power desire either personal power (not good) or institutional power (good for the organization). Provide institutional power seekers with management opportunities.

3. Developing the Project Team

The main goal of team development is to help people work together more effectively to improve project performance. It takes teamwork to successfully complete most projects. Training can help people understand themselves and each other, and understand how to work better in teams. Team building activities include: Physical challenges Psychological preference indicator tools (e.g. MBTI, Social Styles Profiles)

McGregor's Theory X and Y

Theory X: Assumes workers dislike and avoid work, and are inherently lazy. Managers must use coercion, threats, and various control schemes to get workers to meet objectives. Theory Y: Assumes individuals consider work as natural as play or rest and enjoy the satisfaction of esteem and self-actualization needs. Theory Z: (Introduced in 1981 by William Ouchi). Based on the Japanese approach to motivating workers, which emphasizes trust, quality, collective decision making, and cultural values.

DISC Profiles

Uses a four-dimensional model of normal behavior Dominance Influence Steadiness Compliance People in opposite quadrants can have problems understanding each other

Benefits of Resource Leveling

When resources are used on a more constant basis, they require less management. It may enable project managers to use a just-in-time inventory type of policy for using subcontractors or other expensive resources. It results in fewer problems for project personnel and the accounting department. It often improves morale. CAUTION: When using PM software to do Automatic Leveling - may extend the project timeline.