chapter 9&10

Chapter 9: Project Human Resource Management
Learning Objectives
 Explain the importance of good human resource management on projects, including the current state and future implications of the global IT workforce
 Define project human resource management and understand its processes
 Summarize key concepts for managing people by understanding the theories of Abraham Maslow, Frederick Herzberg, David McClelland, and Douglas McGregor on motivation, H. J. Thamhain and D. L. Wilemon on influencing workers, and Stephen

The Importance of Human Resource Management
 Many corporate executives have said, “People are our most important asset”
 People determine the success and failure of organizations and projects

What is Project Human Resource Management?
 Making the most effective use of the people involved with a project
 Processes include:
 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

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
 Intrinsic motivation causes people to participate in an activity for their own enjoyment
 Extrinsic motivation causes people to do something for a reward or to avoid a penalty
 For example, some children take piano lessons for intrinsic motivation (they enjoy it) while others take them for extrinsic motivation (to get a reward or avoid punishment)
 Motivational factors: achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, advancement, and growth, which produce job satisfaction
 Hygiene factors: cause dissatisfaction if not present, but do not motivate workers to do more; examples include larger salaries, more supervision, and a more attractive work environment

Ways to Influence that Help and Hurt Projects
 Projects are more likely to succeed when project managers exert influence with:
 Expertise, and Work challenge
 Projects are more likely to fail when project managers rely too heavily on:
 Authority, Money and Penalty

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, Legitimate, Expert, Reward and Referent

Human Resource Planning
 Involves identifying and documenting project roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships
 Outputs include:
 Project organizational charts, Staffing management plan, Responsibility assignment matrixes and Resource histograms

Responsibility Assignment Matrices
 A responsibility assignment matrix (RAM) is a matrix that maps the work of the project as described in the WBS to the people responsible for performing the work as described in the OBS
 Can be created in different ways to meet unique project needs

Staffing Management Plans and Resource Histograms
 A staffing management plan describes when and how people will be added to and taken off the project team
 A resource histogram is a column chart that shows the number of resources assigned to a project over time

Acquiring the Project Team
 Acquiring qualified people for teams is crucial
 The project manager who is the smartest person on the team has done a poor job of recruiting!
 It’s important to assign the appropriate type and number of people to work on projects at the appropriate times

Resource Loading
 Resource loading refers to 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
 Overallocation means more resources than are available are assigned to perform work at a given time

Resource Leveling
 Resource leveling is a technique for resolving resource conflicts by delaying tasks
 The main purpose of resource leveling is to create a smoother distribution of resource usage and reduce overallocation

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 accounting department
 It often improves morale

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 Tuckman Model of Team Development
 Forming
 Storming
 Norming
 Performing
 Adjourning

Training
 Training can help people understand themselves, each other, and how to work better in teams
 Team building activities include:
 Physical challenges
 Psychological preference indicator tools

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 difficulties getting along

Reward and Recognition Systems
 Team-based reward and recognition systems can promote teamwork
 Focus on rewarding teams for achieving specific goals
 Allow time for team members to mentor and help each other to meet project goals and develop human resources

Managing the Project Team
 Project managers must lead their teams in performing various project activities
 After assessing team performance and related information, the project manager 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

Tools and Techniques for Managing Project Teams
 Observation and conversation
 Project performance appraisals
 Conflict management
 Issue logs

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

Five Dysfunctions of a Team
 Plan some social activities to help project team members and other stakeholders get to know each other better
 Stress team identity
 Nurture team members and encourage them to help each other
 Take additional actions to work with virtual team members

Using Software to Assist in Human Resource Management
 Software can help in producing RAMS and resource histograms
 Project management software includes several features related to human resource management such as:
 Assigning resources
 Identifying potential resource shortages or underutilization
 Leveling resources

Project Resource Management Involves Much More Than Using Software
 Project managers must:
 Treat people with consideration and respect
 Understand what motivates them
 Communicate carefully with them
 Focus on your goal of enabling project team members to deliver their best work


Chapter 10: Project Communications Management

Learning Objectives
 Understand the importance of good communications in projects
 Explain the elements of project communications planning, including how to create a communications management plan and perform a stakeholder communications analysis
 Describe various methods for distributing project information and the advantages and disadvantages of each, discuss the importance of addressing individual communication needs, and calculate the number of communications channels in a project

Project Communications Management Processes
 Communications planning: determining the information and communications needs of the stakeholders
 Information distribution: making needed information available to project stakeholders in a timely manner
 Performance reporting: collecting and disseminating performance information, including status reports, progress measurement, and forecasting
 Managing stakeholders: managing communications to satisfy the needs and expectations of project stakeholders and to resolve issues

Communications Planning
 Every project should include some type of communications management plan, a document that guides project communications
 Creating a stakeholder analysis for project communications also aids in communications planning
Communications Management

Plan Contents
 Stakeholder communications requirements
 Information to be communicated, including format, content, and level of detail
 The people who will receive the information and who will produce it
 Suggested methods or technologies for conveying the information

Information Distribution
 Getting the right information to the right people at the right time and in a useful format is just as important as developing the information in the first place
 Important considerations include:
 Using technology to enhance information distribution
 Formal and informal methods for distributing information

Understanding Group and Individual Communication Needs
 People are not interchangeable parts
 As illustrated in Brooks’ book The Mythical Man-Month, you cannot assume that a task originally scheduled to take two months of one person’s time can be done in one month by two people
 Nine women cannot produce a baby in one month!
Personal Preferences Affect Communication Needs
 Introverts like more private communications, while extroverts like to discuss things in public
 Intuitive people like to understand the big picture, while sensing people need step-by-step details
 Thinkers want to know the logic behind decisions, while feeling people want to know how something affects them personally
 Judging people are driven to meet deadlines, while perceiving people need more help in developing and following plans
Other Communication Considerations
 Rarely does the receiver interpret a message exactly as the sender intended
 Geographic location and cultural background affect the complexity of project communications
 Different working hours
 Language barriers
 Different cultural norms

Setting the Stage for Communicating Bad News
Determining the Number of Communications Channels
 As the number of people involved increases, the complexity of communications increases because there are more communications channels or pathways through which people can communicate

 Number of communications channels = n(n-1)
2
where n is the number of people involved

Performance Reporting
 Performance reporting keeps stakeholders informed about how resources are being used to achieve project objectives
 Status reports describe where the project stands at a specific point in time
 Progress reports describe what the project team has accomplished during a certain period of time
 Forecasts predict future project status and progress based on past information and trends
Managing Stakeholders
 Project managers must understand and work with various stakeholders
 Need to devise a way to identify and resolve issues
 Two important tools include:
 Expectations management matrix
 Issue log

Suggestions for Improving Project Communications
 Manage conflicts effectively
 Develop better communication skills
 Run effective meetings
 Use e-mail and other technologies effectively
 Use templates for project communications

Conflict Handling Modes
 Confrontation: directly face a conflict using a problem-solving approach
 Compromise: use a give-and-take approach
 Smoothing: de-emphasize areas of difference and emphasize areas of agreement
 Forcing: the win-lose approach
 Withdrawal: retreat or withdraw from an actual or potential disagreement

Conflict Can Be Good
 Conflict often produces important results, such as new ideas, better alternatives, and motivation to work harder and more collaboratively
 Groupthink: conformance to the values or ethical standards of a group; groupthink can develop if there are no conflicting viewpoints
 Research suggests that task-related conflict often improves team performance, but emotional conflict often depresses team performance

Developing Better Communication Skills
 Companies and formal degree programs for IT professionals often neglect the importance of speaking, writing, and listening skills
 As organizations become more global, they realize they must invest in ways to improve communication with people from different countries and cultures
 It takes leadership to improve communication

Running Effective Meetings
 Determine if a meeting can be avoided
 Define the purpose and intended outcome of the meeting
 Determine who should attend the meeting
 Provide an agenda to participants before the meeting
 Prepare handouts and visual aids, and make logistical arrangements ahead of time
 Run the meeting professionally
 Build relationships

Using E-Mail, Instant Messaging, and Collaborative Tools Effectively
 Make sure that e-mail, instant messaging, or collaborative tools are an appropriate medium for what you want to communicate
 Be sure to send information to the right people
 Use meaningful subject lines and limit the content of emails to one main subject, and be as clear and concise as possible
 Be sure to authorize the right people to share and edit your collaborative documents


Lessons Learned Reports
 The project manager and project team members should each prepare a lessons-learned report
 A reflective statement that documents important things an individual learned from working on the project
 The project manager often combines information from all of the lessons-learned reports into a project summary report