1. What’s in the Project Human Resources Management Plan?
The project. The human resources management plan is a subsidiary plan of the entire project management plan. It’s a plan that defines how you’ll be able to manage the people on your project team. Let’s take a look at all of the things that this plan accomplishes for you. starting with the inputs, tools, techniques, and outputs. In order to create this plan, you’ll first need the project management plan. Activity resource requirements—enterprise environmental factors and organisational processes—assets, tools, and techniques, and we’ll be looking at these in this module. organisation charts and position test and position descript So you’re talking about networking with your peers, colleagues, and vendors. Organizational Theory. And that’s a key part of this lecture. expert judgement and meetings. The output is the human resource management plan. Now the key thing I want you to take away from these EDOs for this particular plan is enterprise environmental factors.
Your organisation may already have a human resource management plan. It may already define how you manage people and your team. So you need to pay attention to that for your exam. One of the first things we need to talk about with these human resource theories is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs describes five layers of needs, and you can’t move to the layer above until you satisfy the current layer. So let’s walk through this. The first is the physiological need that we all have. We all have physiological needs for food, air, and water. So there are just some basic, fundamental needs that you have. We have a need for safety, so we work in order to have an income to achieve some level of safety in our work. We have social needs; there is some social in the jobs we do, and then we have esteem; we want to be proud of what we do. We have some respect. Then, at the very top, there is self-actualization. And self-actualization describes the realization that what I am doing is my purpose or calling. The next theory you’ll need to know is Herzberg’s theory of motivation. Hertzberg’s theory of motivation says there are two types of agents. We have hygiene agents, and we have motivating agents. Hygiene agents are things like job security and paychecks and an acceptable working environment, or maybe the relationship you have with your manager or your peers.
So hygiene agents are something we expect when we start a new job. Motivating agents are things like bonuses, rewards, and recognition that promote performance. So if all you’re going to get from your job is a paycheck, you’re going to do the work and get the paycheck. But you’re probably not really inspired to go beyond the expectations of the hygiene agents if there are no promises of opportunity, moving up, or appreciation. You’re just going to do the minimum, and certainly if you came in and worked but did not get a paycheck, you might not be interested in working at all for that organization. So you might quit. So you have to have hygiene agents first before you can go into motivating agents. So these must exist first. If they don’t exist, then there’s going to be a low level of performance. Now, hygiene agents promote performance as long as the individual is interested in what’s being offered. If one of the motivating agents is more responsibility, and I don’t really want more responsibility, I’m not really interested in that motivating agent. Now, McGregor’s Theory of X and Y describes two different types of people or two different management styles. Individuals in the X category must be micromanaged because we cannot trust them, they are lazy, and they avoid work. And that’s from management’s perspective on people.
And then Y people are just the opposite of what managers believe. Well, their teams are self-led, they’re motivated and capable, and they can get things done. They like to work. So X is bad and Y is good. Now, in reality, it’s a combination. Here are some people who are lazy and don’t want to work, and you have to micromanage them because you can’t trust them. Then there are those who are self-motivated, capable, and eager to do the work. And sometimes we have those combinations of characters and one individual. So McGregor’s Theory of X and Y is a management perspective on employees. X is bad; Y is good. Then we have McClellan’s theory of needs. This is David McLellan’s theory of acquired needs, sometimes called the “three needs theory.” And it describes how an individual’s needs are actually acquired over time. Unlike Maslow, those needs are in all of us. McClellan says no; over time, your needs are shaped by life experiences.
And the types of needs that we have are: achievement, where you want to excel; affiliation, where you want peace and harmony with your peers and colleagues; and then power, either personal power, like in politics, or institutional power, like in your organization, where you want to be a manager, a director, or a CEO. So one of these three needs is what’s driving or motivating you in your organization. And then you can understand your needs by taking a thematic perception test. And it’s like a test of essays, and then, depending on how you answer questions, it will help determine what your needs may be. And there it is. The thematic perception test The Tat. Some other theories you need to know for your exam We have a simple main theory. Z It’s not ouchi. That’s Wee chi’s theory. Z. And this is a Japanese management style where it’s kind of looking back to after Dimming went to Japan, where we had lifelong employment and more of a familial environment. And so that is what some organisations strive to do: we want people to feel like they belong, contribute, and are valued.
So, one way to remember this is to recall McGregor’s, X, and Y, which we discussed briefly. McGregor’s, x, and y We said that X is bad and Y is good. Well, then Z must be better. So this is the idea here with Wheaty’s theory, Z. The expectation theory, which states that people behave based on what they believe their behaviour will bring them, is up next. If your project team members believe that if they hit a deadline, they’re going to get a bonus or a day off, and they are interested in that reward, they will work accordingly. If your project team is being asked to work overtime and weekends, but there’s no incentive and all that it’s going to bring is more work, and no one even tells them thank you, they’re not going to be really interested in doing all that extra work. The expectancy theory is something that you’ve probably experienced if you have children, your kids.I know my child behaved differently around Grandma than he did around me because he knew that some of the behaviour he could do with Grandma would not be tolerated by me, but Grandma would.
So the expectation theory says people behave based on what they believe their behaviour will bring. And that’s also applicable to the different managers or roles in your project in terms of how people behave. And then the halo effect is a false belief based on a person’s experiences. Where do you see the halo effect? As you look across, you see Jane over there, and Jane is an excellent programmer. Well, surely that would mean that Jane would be a good person to teach programming to others. Just because an individual can do one activity doesn’t mean they can do related activities. Jane, maybe she can, maybe she can’t, but she may not even be interested in teaching. She might like to just be a programmer. So that’s the halo effect. It’s kind of like this halo around the individual. Now, organisational planning, which we discussed earlier in the course, is something where we have a functionally very limited amount of PM power, the matrixes, strong balance and weak, where the adjective describes the amount of power the project manager will have.
And then there are “project eyes,” where a project team is on a project for the duration of the project, and it’s the only project they work on. And the project manager has the most authority. So pay attention to these structures and know them because, on your exam, you may have very similar questions, but depending on which structure you’re operating in, it would determine how you answer the question. Some roles and responsibilities Roles and responsibilities describe the role. Is the label describing what that person is accountable for? So a good example of a role is “project manager,” “project scheduler,” “senior engineer,” “craftsman,” and “framer.” Those are all roles. The authority describes the ability to apply resources, make decisions, and give approval. Responsibility is the work that a team member is expected to perform. So when you have assignments, it’s your responsibility to finish the assignment. Roles and responsibilities typically go hand in hand. For example, if we talk about the network engineer, anything dealing with routers and switches would fall under his responsibilities for the network engineer. Competencies describe the skill and capacity required to do a particular activity.
So, for example, in construction, one of our activities might be framing, where you’re going to frame the house like the skeleton of the house. Well, if I don’t know how to do framing, I can’t do that skill. I need training. I need someone to coach me on the job or to take some classes or what have you. So competency means I have the mental capacity and know-how to do the task successfully. Now, the staffing management plan is actually part of the HR management plan, which is part of the project management plan. It describes staff acquisition—how you get people onto your project. It includes the resource calendars, resource histograms, and the staff release plan. When people have finished working on your project, how will you let them go? What training do you need to raise competency levels? What’s the reward and recognition system? And then what about compliance and safety for the people on your team based on the industry and the type of work that you’re doing?
2. Acquiring the project team
You’re the project manager for a new project in your organization. One of the first things you’ll need to do is acquire the project team. You need people on your team. Now, sometimes managers will say, “Here are the resources that you’ll have, where people will just be assigned to your projectoject team. You need people on your team.
Now, sometimes managers will say, “Here are the resources that you’ll have, where people will just be assigned to your project.” Or perhaps you have a team of people with whom you constantly collaborate. Or you may have to go out and talk to functional managers and recruit people to be on your team. However, acquiring a project team is a process you go through in order to get people on your team. Let’s look at this process and the inputs, tools, techniques, and outputs. The inputs you’ll have are your HR management plan, enterprise environmental factors, the rules that you must follow, and then organizational process assets, maybe historical information or templates or forms. Now, tools and techniques I actually described most of these to you a moment ago. Your assignment or team is assigned to you.
Negotiation is where you have to go out and negotiate with functional managers for people on your team. Now, you may have acquired enough assets that perhaps you need to hire some resources, like contract help. Virtual teams describe your team when individuals are not in the same location as one another. So we all work remotely, for example. And then we have multi-criteria decision analysis, just some ways of negotiating, identifying, and coming to a consensus about what roles we need on the project. Project staff assignments are an output, as are resource calendars and updates to the project management plan updates. When you acquire the project team, a couple of things happen. We talk about acquiring the team and negotiations internally. You may have to negotiate with functional managers and other project managers, or you may be negotiating with vendors if you hire people to help with the project. Of course, when you have the wrong resource, that will affect the project’s success.
So we want to hire the right people for the role, with the capacity, skills, and know-how to get the work done. We must now frequently consider the cost of resources, the competency level—are they senior or junior—and how many years of experience they have with this type of work, and whether we can provide some training. There might be some legal, regulatory, or mandatory criteria in your organisation or industry. So we need to understand what those may be. So like in construction or healthcare, there are some requirements. for the contract with the So that would be a legal requirement. In healthcare, for example, you must have someone who is licenced as an RN.
Acquiring the project team—through preassignment, negotiation, and acquisition—are the three ways that people come onto your team. Virtual teams are becoming more and more popular. For a couple of years, I worked as a project manager in a virtual environment. So my teams were in Chicago; I had people in Portland; I had people in California, Arizona, and Illinois. We were all over the country. So virtual teams are geographically dispersed individuals in which we can use experts from various geographic areas as well as people from home offices. I worked from home, and so did my entire project team. It was fantastic. project members with varying schedules yedo So we had these varying schedules. A virtual team allows you to include people with mobility disabilities, people who don’t travel, or people who prefer not to travel. And then, if we have people from all over, instead of all of us flying to one central office, we just have meetings online through Microsoft Link. So it allowed us to cut down, way down, on travel expenses. Now occasionally we would travel to the home office and meet in person, but almost always we had phone meetings. multi-criteria decision This is where we look at different factors that we want to consider when deciding who should be on our team. So, of course, availability and cost are two of the biggest challenges in this type of work. and abilities with this work are important.
Do these folks have the knowledge to complete this work? What skills do they have? What do they bring to the team? I don’t know about you, but I want someone with a good attitude, a can-do attitude. As a result, my attitude influences who I bring into the team. And then you may have international factors. So you think about travel, virtual teams, language barriers, and time zone differences, so those may be factors in deciding who comes onto your team. Now that you have the results of team acquisition, you have your project staff assignments, you have resource calendars, and you may have project management plan updates. Now, when developing the process team, these are the processes and activities that you do to improve competencies among the team members. The goal is to promote team member interaction and enhance overall project performance. So the goals of this process of developing the project team are to improve teamwork, motivate employees, reduce turnover, and improve overall project performance.
3. Developing the project team
One project management activity that you may be called upon to do is to develop the project team. This is where you take action to help build the team for a better project. Developing the project team means you’re talking about improving competencies, helping the team members interact, and just enhancing your overall project performance because you’re creating a cohesive team. This procedure has four objectives. improve teamwork, motivate your employees, and reduce your turnover rate. You want people to be happy and excited and to feel like they belong where they work. And then this helps to improve the overall project performance.
Now this is a project management process. So we have some inputs, tools, techniques, and outputs. You’ll need the human resource management plan, staff assignments, and resource calendars. The tools and techniques you will need require some interpersonal skills. Your team may need some training. You could engage in some team-building activities aside from project work. You’ll want to establish the ground rules. If you have virtual teams, also called colocation, then you’ll have to take some extra steps to work on developing the project team. When people aren’t in the same room, rewards and recognition are part of developing the project team. And then you may have to use some personnel assessment tools to measure how well project team members are performing. Just two outputs from this process Team performance assessments and enterprise environmental factors Updates.
Leading team development Let’s talk about interpersonal skills. These are soft skills. So you need to be an effective communicator. You have to have some emotional intelligence. That’s where you are able to speak with people and understand people’s perspectives and what they’re truly saying. To solve problems, you may need to engage in some conflict resolution. And then, of course, you’re going to negotiate and influence. And this means also managing, inspiring, and leading the team. Let’s talk about training the project team. Training the project team If your project team members don’t know how to do the work, they need training.
So this is part of the development process. And then some team-building activities are things that you do like exercises or little games to help the team become more cohesive on very large projects. This may be an off-site activity. So, for example, I worked on a project once where our team-building activity was a ropes course where we did ziplines and we went across the ropes bridge and we had to climb all these different ladders and find clues. And it was a really fun activity, and it helped us all learn about each other and develop trust in each other. It was a really fun day. But at the end of that day, we really were a team. We became closer to one another.
Now, there is a theory that talks about how teams naturally develop. And you should know this for your exam. It’s called “forming storms.” Norming, performing, and adjourning formation are the first meetings with your team, when they don’t know much about each other and are just getting to know each other. Storming may be where there’s some initial conflict about who’s going to lead and who’s going to follow. And the direction of the project’s norming happens when things calm down and people begin to fall into the roles that they have on the project. And then performing is when people hit their stride, know what to do, and get it done. And then at the end of the project, the team disbands, and you adjourn the project team. And sometimes that can be a sad day when people go on to other projects. Some more about team development: ground rules are something you establish early in the project, and this is a key point: once they are established, it’s the responsibility of the entire project team to enforce the ground rules. Now, colocation refers to a project team working together in a single location.
Non-colocation is where we have those virtual teams I was talking about a moment ago. But colocation means that we’re all together in one spot. You might see a typed matrix describe a colocation because we’re all together in one physical location. Rewards and recognition systems are a way of rewarding the team and recognising them for the activities they’ve accomplished. So some rewards, like money, are always good rewards, but your organisation may have some policies on that. Other rewards I’ve seen organisations offer include movie tickets or tickets to a baseball game. Rewards, though, are for people that do a good job, and then you initiate rewards or give rewards throughout the project; you don’t wait to the end. It’s nice to do those every month or at the end of every phase and just recognise the hard work that people have done to help the project be successful. You want to avoid a zero-sum reward.
A zero-sum reward is one where only one person can win. So like the employee of the month, you may have 15 team members, and all of them work hard, but there’s only one who can be the employee of the month, and so it makes other people feel like they’re not valued. Personal assessment tools are things like a survey to gauge people’s attitude towards the project or structured interviews where you have key questions set up to query the project team members one-on-one and to get insight into how the project’s going from their perspective, and it helps people feel like they are contributing. Let’s talk about team member performance assessments. So the goal here is to improve skills. So at the end of the project, has an individual learned a new skill? Has the team become smarter and more able to work cohesively? Has the team been consistent? In other words, have you not had people quit or ask to be removed from the project?
And then the goal of team cohesiveness is that we want people to feel like they can rely on one another. Managing the project team involves tracking team performance. Are people completing their activities as assigned on time and with quality? If not, we offer feedback to team members. We just don’t ignore it, and we just don’t give them warnings and things like this. We give genuine feedback so they can improve for the next phase of the next project. Managing a team changes. We know that people leave the organisation and maybe go on to different opportunities elsewhere, but that may mean that a new person comes in, so that’s a team change and then influencing team behavior. So if we have some backbiting or gossip going on in the team or if team members aren’t getting their work done on time or with accuracy, then it’s up to you to take action, to influence the team, to do the work with quality, and to be a good cohesive unit. And that, of course, leads us into resolving conflict. that when team members are in conflict with one another, we need to take action to resolve that conflict. You.
4. Managing the project team
One project management activity that you may be called upon to do is to develop the project team. This is where you take action to help build the team for a better project. Developing the project team means you’re talking about improving competencies, helping the team members interact, and just enhancing your overall project performance because you’re creating a cohesive team. This procedure has four objectives. improve teamwork, motivate your employees, and reduce your turnover rate. You want people to be happy and excited and to feel like they belong where they work. And then this helps to improve the overall project performance.
Now this is a project management process. So we have some inputs, tools, techniques, and outputs. You’ll need the human resource management plan, staff assignments, and resource calendars. The tools and techniques you will need require some interpersonal skills. Your team may need some training. You could engage in some team-building activities aside from project work. You’ll want to establish the ground rules. If you have virtual teams, also called colocation, then you’ll have to take some extra steps to work on developing the project team.
When people aren’t in the same room, rewards and recognition are part of developing the project team. And then you may have to use some personnel assessment tools to measure how well project team members are performing. Just two outputs from this process Team performance assessments and enterprise environmental factors Updates. Leading team development Let’s talk about interpersonal skills. These are soft skills. So you need to be an effective communicator. You have to have some emotional intelligence. That’s where you are able to speak with people and understand people’s perspectives and what they’re truly saying. To solve problems, you may need to engage in some conflict resolution. And then, of course, you’re going to negotiate and influence. This includes managing, inspiring, and leading the team.
Let’s talk about training the project team. Training the project team If your project team members don’t know how to do the work, they need training. So this is part of the development process. And then some team-building activities are things that you do like exercises or little games to help the team become more cohesive on very large projects. This may be an off-site activity. So, for example, I worked on a project once where our team-building activity was a ropes course where we did ziplines and we went across the ropes bridge and we had to climb all these different ladders and find clues. And it was a really fun activity, and it helped us all learn about each other and develop trust in each other. It was a really fun day. But at the end of that day, we really were a team. We became closer to one another.
Now, there is a theory that talks about how teams naturally develop. And you should know this for your exam. It’s called “forming storms.” Norming, performing, and adjourning formation are the first meetings with your team, when they don’t know much about each other and are just getting to know each other. Storming may be where there’s some initial conflict about who’s going to lead and who’s going to follow. And the direction of the project’s norming happens when things calm down and people begin to fall into the roles that they have on the project. And then performing is when people hit their stride, know what to do, and get it done. And then at the end of the project, the team disbands, and you adjourn the project team. And sometimes that can be a sad day when people go on to other projects.
Some more about team development: ground rules are something you establish early in the project, and this is a key point: once they are established, it’s the responsibility of the entire project team to enforce the ground rules. Now, colocation refers to a project team working together in a single location. Non-colocation is where we have those virtual teams I was talking about a moment ago. But colocation means that we’re all together in one spot. You might see a typed matrix describe a colocation because we’re all together in one physical location. Rewards and recognition systems are a way of rewarding the team and recognising them for the activities they’ve accomplished. So some rewards, like money, are always good rewards, but your organisation may have some policies on that. Other rewards I’ve seen organisations offer include movie tickets or tickets to a baseball game. Rewards, though, are for people that do a good job, and you initiate rewards or give rewards throughout the project; you don’t wait to the end. It’s nice to do those every month or at the end of every phase and just recognise the hard work that people have done to help the project be successful. You want to avoid a zero-sum reward.
A zero-sum reward is one where only one person can win. So like the employee of the month, you may have 15 team members, and all of them work hard, but there’s only one who can be the employee of the month, and so it makes other people feel like they’re not valued. Personal assessment tools are things like a survey to gauge people’s attitude towards the project or structured interviews where you have key questions set up to query the project team members one-on-one and to get insight into how the project’s going from their perspective, and it helps people feel like they are contributing. Let’s talk about team member performance assessments. So the goal here is to improve skills. So at the end of the project, has an individual learned a new skill? Has the team become smarter and more able to work cohesively? Has the team been consistent? In other words, have you not had people quit or ask to be removed from the project? And then the goal of team cohesiveness is that we want people to feel like they can rely on one another. Managing the project team involves tracking team performance. Are people completing their activities as assigned on time and with quality? If not, we offer feedback to team members.
We just don’t ignore it, and we just don’t give them warnings and things like this. We provide honest feedback so that they can improve for the next phase of the project. Managing a team changes. We know that people leave the organisation and maybe go on to different opportunities elsewhere, but that may mean that a new person comes in, so that’s a team change and then influencing team behavior. So if we have some backbiting or gossip going on in the team or if team members aren’t getting their work done on time or with accuracy, then it’s up to you to take action, to influence the team, to do the work with quality, and to be a good cohesive unit. And that, of course, leads us into resolving conflict. that when team members are in conflict with one another, we need to take action to resolve that conflict. You.
5. Section wrap
So, in this session on HR Management, which you have now completed, we discussed planning for HR management and creating a staffing management plan, understanding the project calendar, and then our resource calendar when resources were available. And then we talked about acquiring the team. How do we get people on this team? So depending on what type of structure you’re operating in, whether it’s functional, matrix, or projectile, that will affect how you do team acquisition. We are now transitioning from team acquisition to team development. And then, from team development, we want to control our team. We want our team to do the work as it’s assigned to them. So, great job on finishing this session on Project Human Resources Management. Let’s keep going.
