Page 171 - Project+

challenging, especially if your team members are specialists in a given discipline and

don’t have a broad business background. As the project manager, you must mold this
group into an efficient team that can work together to deliver the project on time, on
budget, and within scope, all while producing quality results. This is not always an easy
undertaking, especially if you factor in a combination of full- and part-time team
members, technical and nontechnical people, resources from inside and outside the

organization, and in some cases a team dispersed over a large geographic area.

Selecting Team Members

Choosing or acquiring team members with the right skills and demeanor is important
to the success of your project. Project staff might come from inside (often referred to as
in-house resources) or outside the organization. They may also come from remote
locations. Resources located in other parts of the company, or other parts of the world,

sometimes feel disconnected from the project team. When possible, you should
collocate the resources; that is, you can bring them all together physically so they work
in the same location.

You may often find that you don’t have control over the selection of team members.
Functional managers may assign team members to the project according to their
availability, as we discussed earlier. Other times, you’ll know the team members you
want on the project and can request them. What’s important is that when you’re not

familiar with the resource or their skill set, spend some time with the functional
manager discussing the skills and abilities you need for the tasks. Interview the
resource being recommended and ask specific skill-related questions and how they
might go about approaching the tasks you’ll be assigning to them. If they don’t seem
like a good fit or you are doubtful about their skills and abilities, meet with the
functional manager, share your concerns, and ask them if there is someone else
available.

Organization Charts and Position Descriptions

Once your team members have been selected, it’s a good idea to create a project
organization chart. We’ve all seen an organization chart. It usually documents your
name, your position, your boss, your boss’s boss, your boss’s boss’s boss, and so on. It’s
hierarchical in nature, similar to a WBS. In the case of a project organization chart, you
can present the information in a couple of different ways, including the traditional org

chart with the project manager and project team member names as shown in Figure
6.1.

171