Manage Project Team

With excerpts from my Project Management Novel, I will illustrate the many processes of the PMBOK.  Here is the thirty-seventh one: Manage Project Team. Use this map to see how this process fits into the scheme of processes. 

“All right. I got all that. Now what about managin’ th’team. What do we have to do there to make it better?”

“I suppose the two most important things are to stop arguments and to make sure they do what they’re supposed to do.”

“Right. But don’t tha have some fancy Latin words for these things?”

Gwilym laughed at himself. “I suppose they’re fancy but they’re also precise. Let’s see. We’ll start with  ‘Observation and Conversation.’ That’s a nice way of saying that we’ll watch and listen to the crew to see if they are doing what they’re supposed to be doing and looking out for conflicts.”

Fred wrote that down.

“Then we have to make sure they’re doing their jobs as well as they should be.”

“Isn’t that ‘Quality Control’ or somethin’? Didn’t we talk about that before?”

“It’s different,” replied Gwilym. “Quality control was more about the quality of the deliverable. This is more about the quality of the team member. It’s about how well they are capable of doing their job. Let’s call it,  ‘Project Performance Appraisals.’”

“I like it!” said Fred, writing in his guide.

“Then, remember how in Londinium, the crew was fighting amongst themselves and I had to step in. That we can call  ‘Conflict Management.’ That can result in changes to the project scope making us update the Project Management Plan.”

“Should we keep track of these conflicts, Gwilym. In some kind of a log? Call it an Issues log or somethin’.”

“Good idea,” said Gwilym.

“What is a skill a good Project Manager must have to be able to manage th’team best? That would be a good tool to have for this area.”

Gwilym searched his mind, then spoke. “He must have skills in dealing with people, dealing with people with different personalities from each other and from himself. I suppose the fancy Latin words are  ‘Interpersonal Skills.’”

“Great!” said Fred, writing down these final words. “We’ve made a good start. Later on we’ll have to talk about developin’ the team.”

Develop Project Team

With excerpts from my Project Management Novel, I will illustrate the many processes of the PMBOK.  Here is the thirty-sixth one: Develop Project Team. Use this map to see how this process fits into the scheme of processes. 

Gwilym looked around the workshop. He had the crew of thirty men he had requested but the definition of men had been stretched to 12 year-old boys and 60 year-old men. “All right,” whispered Gwilym to Fred, “It’s time to develop the Project Team.”

The crew looked at the Gwilym and Fred expectantly. “Gentlemen!” began Gwilym. “Welcome to this team. We are about to embark on a great adventure. From the ruins of those four buildings over yonder we will raise to the skies a mighty tower; one that will stand a thousand years. We will work together and get to know each other very well by the end of this year. We will learn skills we never knew existed. We will walk away from this completed project knowing so much about building in general and building towers in particular that our skills will be in high demand throughout the kingdom. You are, indeed, fortunate fellows today.”

The men were smiling all around and congratulating each other. Gwilym continued.

“Some of you know each other; I know none of you. So let’s start with a team building activity. It’s called, ‘Two truths and a lie.’ You will introduce yourself to the team with your name and profession and then proceed to tell us three things about yourself. Things that we didn’t know about you. Two of them will be true, one false. Hopefully, many of them will be funny. Then we need to try and guess which one is the lie. We’ll raise our hands, displaying one, two or three fingers, indicating which ‘fact’ we believe to be a lie. Then you tell us, we all laugh and go to the next person. All clear?”

The men nodded enthusiastically. Gwilym said, “I’ll start. My name is Gwilym. I’m the Project Manager. I have traveled to the Holy Land. I received this scar,” showing his leg wound from the tower collapse, “from a charging boar that I speared to death after. I won the Celtic games championship in Brittany two months ago.”

The crew members all buzzed with interest, asking each other what they thought the lie was. Then Gwilym called them to order. “Which is the lie? One: Holy Land. Two: Wild Boar. Three: Celtic Champion. Raise your hands!”

There was pretty much an even split between the three choices and much hilarity when Gwilym revealed the truth about the ‘wild boar.’ They went around the room and, in less than an hour, had achieved a lot of good bonding as well as searing the names of each crew member into their memories by linking them with several stories.

Next Gwilym addressed the obvious lack of strong men in the group. “I see that this team has been assembled with care.” There was some sniggering at this. “But I am happy to have you all! We have a group of wise men here, men who have learned through their mistakes and from their masters, all there is to know about their professions!” Many of the old men nodded.

“And we have a group of very young men,” Gwilym continued. “Who haven’t learned bad habits yet, who are still young enough to listen to their elders without thinking they know it all!” There was much laughter at this remark.

“So I will team up the young with the old and the main work each of you will do over the course of this project is to transfer the wealth of knowledge from the old to the young. Training!”

“But who will move the heavy logs and blocks of stone?” asked one eager young 12 year-old.

“Certainly not you!” replied Gwilym. “Neither will the old men. We have levers and horses and pulleys and winches to do that work. We will use our brains. Now, to ensure that this knowledge is transferred properly, we will all move in together over the course of this project. Our first job will be to clear out this workshop to make it livable for all of us. I found out on my last tower project that co-location was the key to good team building. Let’s go, gentlemen!”

They spent the rest of the day mucking out the three floors of the workshop, making comfortable sleeping, eating and living space as well as a serviceable latrine with three seats, leading outside the walls. Gwilym, meanwhile, spent the afternoon making a careful copy of the charter onto his own sheet of papyrus and asked Fred to verify the copy. Then he took it with him to evening services and asked the priest to also verify the copy and attach his signature to the copy. Fred and Gwilym stayed with the crew that night.

The next morning, after Gwilym had explained the team’s ground rules, Fred ran the men through the project planning activities while Gwilym again braved the throne room.

Acquire Project Team

With excerpts from my Project Management Novel, I will illustrate the many processes of the PMBOK.  Here is the thirty-fifth one: Acquire Project Team. Use this map to see how this process fits into the scheme of processes. 

“What was our biggest problem on the last tower, Fred?”

Fred thought before he replied, “Keepin’ good people. Getting’ them in th’first place and keepin’ them on th’project once we had them.”

“Let’s work on that over the course of this project, then. We need to acquire the project team properly and manage them well once we have them.”

“Aye, that’s true. But don’t tha also think we need to develop th’team once they are with us? It seems like we get a crew to work with us and they build a tower but they are no better for it.”

“What do you mean Fred?”

“Well, look at me. During each project, I learn somethin’. I learned how to read and write. I’m learnin’ somethin’ about projects each time. Why not spend some of th’time teachin’ th’crew somethin’?”

“You’re right Fred. So far I’ve just used people during the project and let them go when done. But you have become much more useful to me because you learn something each project. I should do the same with the rests of my crew so they are more useful in their next job. Not only for the chance that I may need them again, but so that they thank me later when they use those skills on their next job.”

“So it all starts with getting’ th’team in the first place,” said Fred, pulling out his Project Management Guide. “What did tha call it again, acquire?”

“Yes. ‘Acquire Project Team.’ Sometimes we are given the team on arrival at the site. That happened at the first six towers. Let’s call that,  ‘Pre-assignment.’ But other times, we have to get our own crew. That happened at the last tower. We can call that,  ‘Acquisition.’ And I can imagine times ahead where we might have to negotiate for crew members from the stakeholder. Like pulling skilled people from other projects or other tasks that they’re being used on by our stakeholder. So we’re supposed to build a tower within the castle. Morgause may only give us the people she has to spare, keeping her most skilled workers busy doing something else that she prefers. We’ll have to negotiate for the best people for the job.”

“It could be th’other way around, tha knows.”

“How so?” asked Gwilym.

“Morgause might think this is th’greatest thing ever, this tower, and she’ll give us th’best workers, better than we need.”

“Doesn’t seem like a problem to me.”

“Oh but it is. Have you never worked with perfectionists, all tryin’ to compete with each other over who can do th’best job. We’ll never finish.”

“True enough,” nodded Gwilym. “And that may be even harder to deal with than the way I suggested.”

“What is th’result of these acquisitions and negotiations?”

“We end up with a list of people on the project and a calendar for each person, showing what they’ll be doing on what day.”

Fred was still writing these down in his Project Management Guide. “What shall we call them?”

“Project Staff Assignments and Resource Calendars,” replied Gwilym.

Human Resource Plan

With excerpts from my Project Management Novel, I will illustrate the many processes of the PMBOK.  Here is the fifteenth one: Human Resource Plan. Use this map to see how this process fits into the scheme of processes.   

Gwilym walked around with the calendar, checking off who was working and who was due to come tomorrow for laying out the foundations. He checked the way the crew were doing their jobs and made judgments on their level of various skills. Then he and Fred sat down at an easel with a blank sheet of paper and the network diagram showing all the activities and who was responsible for each and created a new document. “Let’s call this our ‘Human Resource Plan,’ Fred.”

“We’ll list all the roles we have to fill for doing this project: Project Manager, Foreman, Sawyer, Mason, Foundation Man, Laborer, Carpenter, Quarryman, Road-builder. Then we list the names of all the men who fill those roles for us. Some can be used in two or more roles.”

After they had done that, Gwilym took out another sheet of paper. “Some of the men were too happy day before yesterday volunteering for activities. We need to show this in a better way than just their names on activities in the network diagram. I think we’ll get some warning of their overuse if we plot the activities against the people.”

Fred took a large sheet of paper, and wrote the names of the crew on the vertical axis. On the x axis he wrote the names of all the activities. Where they intersected he placed a letter R next to the person who volunteered to take responsibility for that activity. He placed a letter I if the person was involved with the activity. With Gwilym calling out the activities and Fred writing, they were soon finished.

“Let’s add the role of the crew below their names so we can see which roles are overloaded,” said Gwilym. On doing so they saw that the foundation men seemed overloaded at first, then the masons, then the carpenters. That made some sense based on the nature of the work.

“We need to see when we need how many people,” said Fred.

“I agree. Let’s display how many we need based on the network diagram. Now we need lots of laborers for the demolition. Tomorrow we can still use some laborers to demolish the rest of the palace but we need foundation men to start digging out the foundation hole. Also we need Sawyers to be getting the right amount of wood for the tower and a Quarryman to decide how much extra stone we need and obtain that for us.”

Fred had created a chart that was titled, ‘Laborers,’ and had written ‘Number’ on the y axis and ‘Day’ on the x axis. He placed marks indicating 1 through 12 on the y axis and was filling in ten units for how many men they were using on the first day. “How many laborers will we need tomorrow?”

“I think some of the men acting as laborers today are really sawyers and foundation men so they will be coming off to do their jobs. But we could use as many as we could get to tear down the palace.”

“But demolishin’ th’rest of th’palace is not on th’critical path, Gwilym.” Fred pointed this out on the network diagram.

“You’re right, Fred! Why don’t we leave that work for filler work when our men are waiting around for something to do? That way they can focus on the critical path. What are you doing?”

“I’m seeing how many we need of each type of people each day so tha can see when tha need to send extras home and when tha need to bring more on board.”

“I like it!” exclaimed Gwilym. “Let’s fill it out.” They each took sheets of paper, titled with the various skill-sets and, using the network diagram and the calendar as a guide, filled out the resource requirements in what Gwilym called the resource histograms.

They noticed two things:

First, there were times that there was a greater need for a particular resource than they had. They indicated this by drawing a horizontal capacity line at the number of men they had on their crew with a particular skill. They chose not to do this on the laborer skill-set since they could add people there from other skills when they were not working.

Second, there were occasions when the need for a particular skill was far lower than the number of people they had with that skill. “These will be times of furlough,” said Gwilym. “The men wanted warnings of when they would be furloughed so that they can tend to their farms. This will work for that.”

“But what about times like these,” pointed out Fred, “when we have not enough carpenters?”

“First we have to see which activities put that demand on. If they are on the critical path, we can’t delay them but there may be some demand coming from activities off the critical path. If that is the cause, we can delay those activities and see what that does to the schedule.”

The two of them worked through that example and were able to put off some work which delayed another path of the plan and solved the carpenter resource problem. But now limited mason time caused another resource constraint. Plus it caused them to have to redo all the resource histograms; a lengthy and complicated process.

“Let’s see how the men are doing while we think about a better way to handle this problem,” suggested Gwilym.

That night, Gwilym had an epiphany for his human resource problem. The next day, once the crew was working hard, he went back into the village and purchased some cheap, colored cloth and a pair of spring scissors.

He set about cutting this cloth into many small squares, each about an inch square. Then he took some paper and lined it like they had yesterday with axes showing dates on the x axis and number of people on the y axis. Each week on the x-axis and each half person on the y axis was one inch long. He made one for each skill. Then he called Fred in.

Gwilym explained his idea to Fred. “Each one of these colored squares indicates half a person of a particular skill working for a week.” He placed two on top of each other. “This represents a whole person working for a week. We place this on the chart and we can see what we need given the current schedule. Then, when we change the schedule, we move the pieces of cloth around to make sure we don’t overload our people.”

Fred’s eyes grew wide as he understood, and the two men worked together, placing squares, adjusting the schedule, moving squares, sometimes cutting them further down to indicate a quarter person on even vertically to indicate someone working for a day or two rather than for a week. Within a few hours they were done. They had reached a point where the schedule could be met without stretching resources anywhere. There were a few occasions when they would have to bring on some extra laborers and other occasions when work off the critical path would have to sit until there was a lull in other activities. But their schedule was doable now and the men would have plenty of warning when they could take time off the project and work their fields.

During dinner they stitched the cloth pieces to the paper. Then Fred redid the calendar and placed it on the wall where every member of the team could see it. As the crew left the job-site at the end of the day, Gwilym showed it to them. Each crew member followed their plan on the calendar and took note of the days they would be expected to leave the project.

“How good are you at predicting de future, Gwilym?” asked Tollemache.

“The schedule should be pretty accurate for the next few weeks. Then things will happen that will change the predictions but I will keep this calendar up-to-date. Keep checking back to see how things will change. If you have plans that cannot be changed due to your farm, it becomes my problem.”

The men nodded and walked off home. “What do tha call this tool, Gwilym?”

“Resource planning. No. There will be other plans we need for resources like stone and wood. How about Human Resource Plan? Yes. I like that."

Estimate Activity Resources

With excerpts from my Project Management Novel, I will illustrate the many processes of the PMBOK.  Here is the eighth one: Estimate Activity Resources. Use this map to see how this process fits into the scheme of processes. 

Now that the men were no longer grumbling about their gambling losses, Gwilym expected lifted spirits. While this was true the first few days, pretty soon fights between the team-members seemed to get even worse, and some had to be broken up by Gwilym. They were arguing about the different activities they were supposed to be doing. Gwilym surmised that removing Tarrant as a common enemy had surfaced these rivalries. He called a team meeting.

“Gentlemen! We are all working together to build a grand structure. We know what we have to do and how we are to do it. What are we arguing about?”

“’E’s supposed to ’ook the stones to the foundation afore Oi can build on ’em but ’e won’t do it!” accused one of the men, pointing at another.

“Oo said that were moi job?” retorted the one accused.

“You’re the lead mason, of course it’s your job!” replied the first.

More men started pointing fingers at others and a general uproar ensued. Gwilym listened for a few minutes and then he stood. He said nothing, but those looking at him quieted down and those not, noticing that others had quieted, looked around and shut up at seeing Gwilym. Finally only one pair of men was left arguing.

“You keep throwin’ your stone scraps off to the side instead of bringin’ them to me for moi road!”

“Well oi’m not yer bloody servant! Get the scraps yerself!” At that the two men noticed Gwilym looking at them and felt the eyes of the rest of the men. They both blushed and quieted down.

Gwilym thought for a moment and then spoke. “Do we agree that this book shows the way the tower should be built?” Reluctant nods of heads affirmed this.

“It tells us WHY, WHERE, HOW we are building it and WHAT we are building, right?” More heads nodded.

“But what it doesn’t tell us is WHO does what, right?”

This question was greeted with enthusiastic agreement; all the men shouting over each other how this question of WHO did WHAT was affecting their work.

“All right then, nobody does any more work today until we figure it out.”

Gwilym placed the project book in the center of the table and opened it to the defined activities and pointed to the first one. “This activity is done. See how I’ve placed a check mark next to it?” The men nodded.

“So are all these activities.” He showed a series of activities accompanied by check marks. “Here is the next activity that must be done. One of you must do it. It says, ‘Level foundation.’ Who in this room will take responsibility for that activity?”

No one said a word. The men had been used to not volunteering for work since that had always meant more work for them at the same pay.

“I need two things for every activity: some materials and somebody to do something with those materials. Both are resources. What I’m trying to do now is estimate resources needed to complete each activity. And for that I need you to step up and take responsibility that you will be that resource.”

Gwilym looked hard at Joseph. “Isn’t that your job, Joseph?”

“Aye, it be moi job a’roit. But ain’t it your ’sponsibility?”

“The entire project is my responsibility. But I cannot be responsible for all of these activities. I’m not a master foundation builder like you, Joseph. You know when it is level and strong. You’re the one who told us we had to add piles into the river and add more rock to make it strong. So I ask again, who is responsible for leveling the foundation?”

“That be me,” Joseph admitted.

“Then I will write your name next to that activity. Is that alright?”

“Aye”

“Good. The next activity says: ‘Create notch templates.’ That’s my responsibility so I’ll place my name next to that activity.” Gwilym signed his name.

“Now then, the next activity says: ‘Cut first logs to length.’ Who is responsible for that?” Gwilym looked around and noticed something interesting. The men who had appeared scared at volunteering for work when he asked of the first activity were looking around at each other, focusing on Peter, the lead carpenter, placing peer pressure on him to volunteer.

Peter felt their looks and raised his hand. “That’s moi activity.”

“How about, ‘Cut notches in first layer of logs’?”

“Oi’ll give that activity to moi apprentice, Fergus,” replied Peter.

Gwilym was about to write Fergus’ name on the plan when he had an idea. He liked the fact that men were volunteering for activities. He felt that this would give him pressure that he could apply when it came time to do the activity. They had made a commitment in front of their peers to do something. If they were just told in front of others that they were responsible, they could always say that they hadn’t wanted the responsibility. But now, by volunteering, they were telling everyone that they would do it.

Gwilym turned to Fergus, “Do you agree to take on this activity?”

Fergus looked to Peter, then back at Gwilym. “Oi’ll take responsibility, sirrah.”

The men laughed but shut up when they saw that Gwilym was serious. He wrote Fergus next to this activity and moved to the one after it. The team went through each activity, one at a time until each one had a person’s name next to it.

There were a few hitches. Some activities had to be better defined. Gwilym readily did this, realizing that they would have had problems with these activities when they got to that point anyway; better to plan it properly today. Some activities were duplicated and they were removed.

There was an activity where two men wanted responsibility. ‘Place cornerstone of tower on arch.’ Joseph, the master arch builder wanted to be certain this was placed in the correct location but so did William, the tower man. In this case, Gwilym broke the activity into two activities and each man took responsibility for one of them. One activity read, ‘Decide location of center of tower’ and Joseph took this activity. The other activity read, ‘Place cornerstone based on arch center’ and William took this activity.

There was an activity nobody wanted that anyone could do. ‘Book room for celebration.’ Gwilym watched all the men looking around at each other, no-one willing to take on this small, extra activity. He looked at the plan and noticed that one of the laborers had not taken responsibility for any activities; the rest had taken at least one. “Hal, could you take this one on?” he asked. Hal looked embarrassed and agreed.

The last hiccough in this operation was one activity that nobody wanted. All refused to meet Gwilym’s eye as he read the activity and looked at his men. He repeated the activity and asked his men what the problem was.

“‘Place arch supports’ is an activity that is always a problem,” he was told. “Men who do that never try it again. There are too many problems with it. You always get the arch builders complaining that the supports are too high or too low or not strong enough. The last three men I know who did that, two I never heard from them again and the third is Barry here, he talks to himself and is only good for simple laboring jobs.”

This last statement elicited a roar of laughter at which the confused Barry smiled. The men then calmed down and looked to Gwilym for guidance. “This reminds me of people not wanting to take charge of a tough project. So let’s treat it like a small project. What is the first part of this activity?”

Gwilym took a blank sheet of parchment and wrote on the top, ‘Place arch supports’. The men offered suggestions on activities below this: ‘Measure depth of water’, ‘Hammer pilings into river’, ‘Create support foundation’, ‘Draw out support structure’, ‘Get agreement on support structure’, Measure wood’, ‘Place supports’, ‘Attach cross braces’, and so on. When they had offered up all the work packages, Gwilym asked for a responsible person for each work package. The men stalled again on ‘Get agreement on support structure’ so Gwilym offered to break this work package down even further. But then Joseph agreed to take on this work package and the team continued on planning the project.

It took the rest of the day but Gwilym, looking around at the expressions of his men, was convinced that this exercise was worth it. The activities were better defined; the men had a clear idea of what their responsibility was on this project. They also understood what the other men were tasked with and developed a respect for each other’s workload.

Gwilym spent the next day rewriting the project plan to include these new activities and the person responsible for each. He used his finest calligraphy to place the names of the responsible men next to the activities with illuminated capital letters. Then he showed these to the men who were proud to see their names so honored. Because of the different colored inks and the clear, illuminated capital letters, each man could clearly see the activities for which they had taken responsibility.

This was the document Gwilym walked around with for the rest of the project, checking off each activity as it was completed. He then went to the next man and reminded him of the activity he had volunteered for and asked him to start working on it.