Project Initiation & Resource Management

• Initiating The Project II

Contents

• Building a project team
• Project stakeholders
• Kick-off meeting

Key Components of Project Initiation

• Business case
• Project charter
• Project scope
• Building a project team
• Stakeholders
• Kick-off meeting

Building a Project Team

• Project resource management
• Acquiring resources
• Developing a team
• Project team
• Project team member requirements
• Resource management plan
• Building out a RACI chart

Project Resource Management

• Project resource management includes the processes to identify, acquire and manage human resources needed for project completion.
• Resource Management focuses on categorizing, allocating, managing, and releasing of human resources.

Acquiring Resources

• The process of acquiring team members, facilities, equipment, materials, and other resources necessary for project completion
• It provides resource selection guidance and assigns them to activities
• Project resources can be internal or external to the project-performing organization.
• The project manager of a project team should effectively negotiate and influence others to provide the needed resources.
• Failing to acquire the necessary resources may affect project schedules, budgets, customer satisfaction, quality, and risks
• Lack of available resources requires the project manager to assign alternative resources, possibly with different competencies or costs.

Developing a Team

• Improving competencies, team member interaction, and the overall team environment to boost project performance
• Developing a team results in improved teamwork, enhanced interpersonal skills, motivated employees, reduced attrition, and improved overall project performance.
• Project managers require the skills to identify, build, maintain, motivate, lead, and inspire project teams
• Teamwork is critical for project success, with developing effective project teams as one of the project manager’s primary responsibilities

Project Team Member Requirements

• Ensure relevant skill sets to perform work and produce desired results.
• Avoid single point of failure
• Leverage core competencies and skills of general specialists supporting project areas
• Adequate physical resources
• Other requirements such as access rights

Resource Management Plan

• Roles and Responsibilities

  • Role is a person's function in a project
  • Authority includes rights to use resources take decisions and accept deliverables
  • Responsibility includes assigned duties
  • Competence includes skills and required capacities

• What's in the Plan:

  • Project Organization Chart visualizes the team and it's reporting relationships
  • Project team resource management provides team resource guidance on how to define, staff, manage and release
  • Training strategies and requirements
  • Team development methods
  • Resource controls manage physical resource
  • Recognition Plan rewards and recognizes team members

High Team Performance

• Achieved through open communication
• Creating team building opportunities developing trust among team members
• Managing conflicts constructively
• Encouraging collaborative problem solving and decision making

Phases of Team Development

• Forming

  • Displaying eagerness
  • Socializing
  • Generally polite tone
  • Sticking to safe topics
  • Unclear about how one fits in
  • Some anxiety & questioning
  • Taking the 'lead'
  • Being highly visible
  • Facilitating introductions
  • Providing the 'big picture'
  • Establishing clear expectations
  • Communicating success criteria
  • Ensuring response times are quick

• Storming

  • Some resistance
  • Lack of participation
  • Conflict based on differences of feelings & opinions
  • Competition
  • High emotions
  • Starting to move towards group norms
  • Requesting & encouraging feedback
  • Identifying issues & facilitating their resolution
  • Normalizing matters
  • Building trust by honoring commitments

• Norming

  • Purpose & goals well understood
  • More confident
  • Improved commitment
  • Members engaged and supportive
  • Relief, lowered anxiety
  • Developing cohesion
  • Recognizing individual & team efforts
  • Providing learning opportunities & feedback
  • Monitoring the 'energy' of the team

• Performing

  • High motivation, trust & empathy
  • Individuals defer to team needs
  • Effectively producing deliverables
  • Consistent performance
  • Demonstrations of interdependence & self-management
  • 'Guiding from the side' (minimal intervention)
  • Celebrating successes
  • Encouraging collective Decision-making & problem-solving

• Adjourning

  • Also referred to as the Transitioning or Mourning phase
  • Shift to process orientation
  • Sadness
  • Recognition of team & individual efforts
  • Disbanding
  • Recognizing change
  • Providing an opportunity for summative team evaluations ('lessons learned')
  • Providing an opportunity for individual acknowledgments
  • Celebrating the team's accomplishments (an "after party')

Tools and Techniques for Team Development

• Training: Project managers suggest training courses to improve individual and team development
• Team-Building Activities: Many organizations provide in-house team-building training activities, as well as services from external companies
• Reward and Recognition Systems: Management bonuses, trips, or rewards motivate teams to work effectively

Project Team

• A set of people who support the manager to reach the goals of the project
• Roles on the project team may include:
  • Project management staff members
  • Project staff members
  • Supporting experts
  • Business partner members

Assembling High-Performing Project Team

• Estimate, acquire, and manage teams of people.
• Estimate resources team members need to carry out the work.
• Obtain people.
• Develop the team, improve competencies, facilitate interactions and create an effective teaming environment.
• Track team performance, create and execute improvements based on feedback, resolve issues, and manage team personnel changes.

Assigning Project Responsibilities I

• Defining responsibilities within project teams depends on multiple factors
• Teams use a traditional approach to explicitly define and delegate responsibilities as part of an overall work breakdown structure
• Teams using an agile or hybrid approach self-organize and determine who performs which work.

Assigning Project Responsibilities II

• Identifying a suitable human resource to perform a responsibility
  • Experience: relevant
  • Knowledge: information
  • Skills: relevant skills
  • Attitude: ability and motivation to collaborate
  • International factors: team member location etc

Resource Assignment

• Project managers are expected document assigned team members, their roles, responsibilities, a team directory, project organization charts, and project schedules
• These assignments are part of a project management plan and broader in scope than a resource management plan
• Details in the plan:
  • Team members
  • Roles and Responsibilities
  • Directory
  • Organization charts
  • Project schedules

Building out a RACI Chart

• A type of responsibility assignment matrix
• The ultimate goal is to clarify each person's role on a project
• R: Responsible does the work
• A: Accountable makes sure the work is done
• C: Consulted gives input or feedback on work
• I: Informed needs to know the outcome
• A RACI chart defines project roles, gives direction to each team member, stakeholder, and ensures work gets done efficiently.

Building out a RACI Chart - Responsible

• Individuals who do the work to complete the task
• Every task needs at least one responsible party, it is best practice to limit the number of team members assigned to a task's responsible role

Building out a RACI Chart - Accountable

• Ensures the task is done
• Only one individual accountable per task.
• The accountable person has the authority to approve the deliverable of the responsible party.

Building out a RACI Chart - Consulted

• Team members or stakeholders in the Consulted role have useful information to help complete a task.
• There is no maximum or minimum limit to people assigned

Building out a RACI Chart - Informed

• Those needing to be kept up to date on the final decisions and task completion.
• Team members, stakeholders will not be asked for feedback.
• Only status updates

Defining Team Ground Rules

• Ensure expected behaviors from the start
• Allows the team to handle challenges
• Guidelines and Techniques for:
  • Meetings
  • Communications
  • Conflict management
  • Shared values
  • Decision-making
• Aligns with ethics

Discussion Points

• Personal/real experiences and hypothetical for one approach preferred over others
• Discuss the project outcomes and team functionality under each
• Delve into factors that dictate choices for tradition over Agile
  • Methodology choice based on scale/complexity
  • Team composition: expertise and experience
  • Influencing factors?

Types of People in a Team

• The control freak
• The creative and artistic one
• The public speaker
• The lazy one
• The brainiac
• The cheerleader
• The clueless one
• The scribe
• The popular one
• The critic

Project Stakeholders

• Project stakeholders
• Examples of project stakeholders.
• Identifying stakeholders
• Stakeholder register
• Conducting a stakeholder analysis
• Managing stakeholders

Project Stakeholders I

• An individual, group, or organization that may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project.
• Stakeholders in a project have a stake in the project and deliverables
• Project stakeholders may have competing interests, needs, priorities, and opinions

Project Stakeholders II

• Stakeholders can be project team members, customers, end-users and other people
• Stakeholders may affect or be affected by decisions

Examples of Project Stakeholders

• Internal:
  • Sponsor
  • Resource Manager
  • PMO
  • Portfolio Steering Committee
  • Program Manager
  • Project managers
  • Team Members
• External:
  • Customers
  • End Users
  • Suppliers
  • Shareholders
  • Regulatory Bodies
  • Competitors

Identifying Stakeholders I

• Process of identifying stakeholders regularly, analyzing, and documenting their relevant information, regarding interest, involvement, impact, and interdependencies

Identifying Stakeholders II

• Involve internal/external stakeholders early, identify their needs, and secure participation in defining parameters/success criteria.
• Negotiate a consensus early to avoid painful/costly unmet needs later
• Stakeholders are best able to help, due to their interest in a project

Stakeholder Register

• A list of stakeholders: individuals/organizations whose activity is involved in project; those affected negatively/positively; whose expectations must be considered.
• Created by documenting basic information such as identification, assessment, and classification
  • Identification: stakeholder names, roles, locations, and contact info
  • Assessment: stakeholder requirements, potential influences, key interests
  • Classification: is the stakeholder internal/external and supporter/resistor

Stakeholder Register Example

• Includes name, organization, project role, major requirements, expectations, influence, area of interest, internal/external, and supporter?

Conducting a Stakeholder Analysis

• Technique project managers can use to understand stakeholders.
• It is used to increase support, document analysis results in a stakeholder register, or in a separate stakeholder management strategy.
• The strategy includes basic stakeholder info., level of interest, level of influence, and potential management strategies.

Steps to Conducting a Stakeholder Analysis

• Managers use project impacts to understand stakeholder needs.
• List stakeholders, and determine each individuals' level of influence/concern.
• Assess stakeholder engagement and participation styles.

Visualizing Stakeholder Analysis

• In a powergrid, stakeholders are plotted by interest vs influence.

Managing Stakeholders

• Partner with key stakeholders in the top right corner, to reach desired outcomes
• Consult with stakeholders with high influence but low interest, this is in the top left corner to meet their needs
• Show consideration for stakeholders with lower influence but high interest
• Monitor stakeholders with low influence AND low interest.

Stakeholder Engagement Plan

• Part of the management plan to promote the project's productive involvement and stake
• It can be constructed in a number of ways with varied details, based on expectations
• The strategy may include ways to engage with individuals/groups of stakeholders.
• Reviews diverse needs, is developed early, and it's updated as needed
• Created post identification to identify the process
• Plan is updated regularly

Stakeholder Engagement Strategy

• Involve stakeholders and potential impacts to the project
• Develop appropriate management strategies
• Create and maintain relationships between the team and stakeholders

Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix I/II

• Compares engagement between multiple stakeholders
• Classifications of the engagement of stakeholders
  • Unaware: Unaware of the project and potential impacts.
  • Resistant: Aware of the project and potential impacts but resistant to any changes that may occur as a result of the work or outcomes of the project.
  • Neutral: Aware of the project, but neither supportive nor unsupportive.
  • Supportive: Aware of the project and potential impacts and supportive of the work and its outcomes.
  • Leading: Aware of the project and potential impacts and actively engaged in ensuring that the project is a success.

Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix II/II

• C represents current engagement AND D represents essentiality
• The gap directs effective communicating of stakeholders
• Closing this gap is essential engaging

Kick-off Meeting

• A meeting held when the project commences, here stakeholders meet and review goals
• It can be held after project charter or the business case, but when needed
• It is still important when virtual
• Agendas document action items and decision and minutes focus on these

Structuring the Kick-Off Meeting

• Structure depends on the project but includes the 5 W's:
  • Introduction
  • Background
  • Why
  • Scope
  • Action plan
  • Who's doing what
  • How to work together
  • Success

Why Projects Fail: Initiation Missteps

• Unclear, unrealistic expectations
• Miscommunication
• Lack of resources, or scope-creep/mismanagement
• Clarify particularly around communication methods, during the initiation phase to increase the changes