Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme, Sixth Edition

Recruiting the Project Team

After some 40 years of practicing project management, I finally had a project management assignment that allowed me to select exactly the team I wanted. My selection received the highest priority, and I got everyone I requested — 100-percent assignment from everyone. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. What a pleasure it was to work with a team whose members were all known to me and with whom I had worked with on previous projects. They were people who made a commitment and stuck to it. You could go the bank with their commitment and know that it was sound. With that team it is no surprise that the project finished ahead of schedule and under budget. There was no staff turnover during the 27-month project. I don't expect to ever have that ideal situation again.

The reality is that most likely you will inherit team members because they are available. (I've often wondered if availability is a skill.) So this chapter starts by discussing the realities of recruiting a project team.

Project plans and their execution are only as successful as the manager and team who implement them. Building effective teams is as much an art as it is a science.

When recruiting and building an effective team, you must consider not only the technical skills of each person but also the critical roles and chemistry that must exist between and among the project manager and the team members. The selection of you as the project manager and your team members will not be perfect ...