Essential Aspects in Project Management - Coursework Example

ESSENTIAL ASPECTS IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT By: Professor: Class: University: City: State: Date of submission: Essential Aspects in Project Management Introduction Project teams play important in ensuring the achievement of project success. The achievement of such goal depends on building effective teams before the commencement of the project. To guarantee the achievement of such results, it is important to note that project managers play vital roles of managing and adequately ensuring the commitment of each member of the team. Moreover, the project managers need to have adequate knowledge of managing the teams considering that they have complex mix human resources, skills, technical understanding, and the process of facilitation. Non-static and unchanging project teams form the basis of ensuring effective project management. However, the effectiveness of the project usually depends on effective team development. In absence of effective project team, it is hardly to achieve the objective of the project. In fact, the most difficult aspect involved in the management of the project is managing the individuals within the team (Chapman, 2012). There are different formal and informal responsibilities that each team members play in a bid to create successful projects. Consequently, each team member within project management has specified responsibilities of carrying their delegated tasks. The effective management of the teams depend on good leadership skills to control the project as such would ensure inspiration, proper leadership, and motivation of the team members to a greater heights. Besides, successful project managers need to recognize the significance of people considering that without such members of the team, the project would cease to exist. The team usually play important role in ensuring the quality of the project within the outline time schedule and budget. This paper will critically discuss the essential aspects of building effective projects teams through focusing on project management essentials and team building. Essential Aspects of Building Effective Project Teams Based on the module studied, we research teams and teamwork and noted that consistently similar qualities within the team is critical for the achievement of exceptional results. While building the group, we defined ours based on the six characteristics of which each played specified and vital in making the team effective. Without any of the features, it is clear that team would fail. Common Rationale The most important ingredient that determines the project management success is ensuring there clear, common, and compelling purpose. In most cases, the purposes of the teams are ill-defined, uninspiring, and foggy which forces the team to figure out what the success of project should look like. Usually, the teams are mechanisms of achieving the desired results, which in most cases are too big to realize with the efforts of an individual. Moreover, the purpose of the project often provides the members with the reason to collaborate (Society for Human Resource Management, 2015). Having a clear and a compelling purpose gives the project management team the reason to commit themselves to achieve the desired results. The common purpose not only calls for togetherness of the team but also holds the team managers together during the inevitable turbulence associated with project management. The power of the project management team often flows from the alignment of every member of the team to the purpose. Creation of such alignment is one of the most critical roles of leadership. Definition of clear purpose for our project made it easy for the achievement of the desired results since each member of the team understood the objective and committed towards the achievement of the purpose. Misaligned teams are often clear indicator of poorly led teams. To ensure the success of our group, we focused on key criteria, which are essential for the alignment of the team. These criteria include clarity which visioning the purpose and understanding of the benefit efforts presented by each member; relevant which makes the members want to be part of the project and the purpose of the team and alignment with the goals and interests of individuals. Significant portrays the worthiness of the project and ensuring that team objectives have sufficient magnitude of making the work worth the efforts; achievable reflect believing in the project which requires every team member believe in the purpose as being realistic and attainable. Urgent reflects the need for the project and a sense of timelessness driving the behaviour. Our alignment criteria were straightforward; however, aligning them to the common purpose is a challenge. The major mistake of most project teams is launching the teams too quickly and pushing the implementation before the members have the opportunity of coalescing around the purpose and ensuring the alignment of each member. Clear Roles The manner in which we apportioned the purpose of the team largely determined the team’s synergy. In most, the high performing teams tend to leverage the roles of each member against the collection of work products. Hence, it is critical that the members are clear on their roles and the roles of others. The group defined the roles based on the design, division, and deployment of the work of the team. Although the concept is compelling logically, most teams often find it challenging to implement. If the purpose of the team is to ensure adequate cooperation, then it is critical to develop clear roles for strategic cooperation of the team. Whenever the teams divide the activities associated with project management, there is introduction of interdependence, which to some extent is an investment with synergism as the return of investment (Carroll, 2002, pp.105). As a team, we aimed to reap the rewards associated with interdependence; therefore, we invested inadequate cooperation. Through understanding that collaboration is a choice, despite the obvious logic collaboration, our team experienced interdependent through acting independently. Any activity that the team leaders avoid or fail normally facilitates the discussion on the roles especially those associated with clarity of the roles. Accepted Leadership Any team that desires to thrive and experience high performance needs to focus on competent leadership. When there is absence of such leadership, the team could quickly lose its way. Whereas a common and a compelling task could be the biggest contributor to ensure the effectiveness of the team, inadequate leadership within the team is the biggest reason for ineffectiveness. The project leaders play important roles in framing the purpose of the team and ensuring adequate facilitation of the discussions on the meaning and nature of the project (Moraveck, 2013, pp.220). Usually, the vision, commitment, and communication skills of the leader are important in governing the optics through the members of the team view the purpose and reason for the alignment with the objectives. Considering that collaboration is a choice, which each of the team members hold, the project leaders need to be in a position of calling out the initiative and being creative to motivate the exceptional work undertaken by the team members and through collective performance (Curlee, 2008, pp.87). The leaders relying on positional authority and autocratic styles to achieve the desired outcomes see the performance level of the team acting in service to support the team. While developing project team management, there are five key qualities making the mindset of effective team leaders including appreciation of collective intelligence within the team, and believing in the power presented by diversity of the members, seeing team leaders based on the roles they serve not position. Moreover, the concept involves seeing power as something worth releasing, sharing rather than something held, and control and understanding that team is meant for the achievement of purpose. Considering that collaboration is a choice, it is critical that the team accepts a leader (Pinto, 2013, pp.55). Leadership acceptance is not an on-off concept like most dimension of teaming but rather a matter of degree. It is significant to note that team members could accept and support the leader strongly, accept with reservations, or reject the leader. In every aspect of project management, team leadership might be the most challenging of all leadership roles. Excellent Communication Communication is critical to ensuring adequate cooperation among the team members. One of the major motives of organizations implementing team is that team based project management is more responsive and faster. A team cannot move faster unless there is effective communication. Fast, clear, timely, and accurate communication is the seal of high levels of team performance, which have become proficient at straight talk; there is little wasted motion though misconception of the project purpose. In most cases, the team model often circles back to the common purpose, which is the most important feature of high-performance team (Kerzner, 2006, pp.188). However, it is critical to note that the connection is intentional since it is impossible for the team to maintain the unity of purpose without have an exceptional communication among the team members. Losing of ability to communicate properly and understanding of one another, the team quickly losses the sense of purpose. Besides, confused communication and the purpose of unity ca never coexist. Solid Relationships  The common misconception in most teams and teamwork is the belief that effective work and communication depends on the friendship of the team members. Moreover, the diversity of the skills, knowledge, and experience required to divide the task effectively mostly precludes high levels of friendship, which in most cases depend on commonality of the manner in which people think and present their interests and beliefs. Based on diversity, it is important to note that the more different people are in the team, the smarter it could be. A team with members looking at the project from different dimensions often enjoy decided advantage over homogenous teams. The diverse team would be in a position of surrounding the problems, decisions, and other related issues with brighter collective intelligence (Lee, 2004, pp.108). The diverse team would see more creative solution if they have the ability of channelling their difference into synergy rather than strife. Solid team relationships usually ensure provision of environment require for high level of collaboration. The primary factors characterizing solid relationships are trust, acceptance, courtesy, respect, and understanding. In every interdependent relationship, trust is a non-negotiable element. It is impossible for the project management leaders to mandate trust but on have the ability of creating an environment and opportunities that would facilitate development among the members. People might not be interdependent with the ones they do not trust; hence, in absence of trust, it might difficult to achieve high level of collaboration. Managing Virtual Team Projects (VTP) Virtual teams involve working with colleagues in remote locations: close or in different countries. Currently, the VTP trend is becoming a reality within the workplaces. If the trend continues, virtual working would increasingly influence the operation of projects, which makes an effective virtual team value as a critical asset (Zulch, 2014, pp.175). The key importance of forming the virtual teams is the ability associated with cost effectively tapping an array of talent from different locations. There are several definitions of virtual teams; however, within our team, we focused on the virtual project team displaying various attributes. The attributes including working primarily from a fixed location with the expectation of travelling as part of the job and people likely to work from home in many days. Most project managers with few or more years of experience are likely to have managed such projects where or all the project members were remotely located (Dafermos, 2001, pp.115). Besides, there are differences in management of projects virtually from co-located teams. However, being a virtual team is not for every person since virtual teams are more likely to suffer from the isolation feelings than the collocated teams if there is inappropriate set-up. Therefore, the virtual teams need to be more self-managing and focus their efforts in a specific manner. To manage effectively their virtual project teams, the project leaders need to understand how to achieve such. In our group, we contended that there are five major aspects that the project managers should direct their efforts to ensure effective management of the virtual teams: managing the goals, managing communications, keeping the members motivated, assessing the effectiveness of remote communication regularly, and application of various collaboration tools. Manage Goals While setting our teams, we noticed that setting clear project goals and objectives was vital. Whenever a portion of the team is virtual, goal clarity is more important. The virtual team members cannot walk physically to certain project to ask clarifying questions review the goal statements, or physically attending the team focus meetings. For example, in our team pen activity, we tied the pen on the strings and held towards the end by each of the five members of our group. In such case, the intention involved writing on the board placed horizontally on the table. One thing was clear at that moment; every member needed to understand the goal of the team and participate fully as that determined whether the pen would write. Understanding of the project goal made team penning successful. Setting clear goals, expectations, and the alignment of each virtual member to the project goal was critical (Lee, 2009, pp.460). To ensure the prevalence of inclusion within the virtual teams, it is important to consider adding the project team goal statement or finding way to ensure availability of such statement. The role of the manager at the beginning and the end of a virtual project is critical especially during the selection of the team and definition of various project deliverables, milestones, goals, and deadlines. Different from the other types of projects teams, virtual project teams are selected majorly based on their professional experience (Kerzner, 2006, pp.201). Moreover, the virtual teams are self-managing upon the establishment of various parameters with each team member leading the project in his/her experience field. Virtual teams are more likely to be motivated by the feeling of recognition and respect by others as opposed to other to other project teams. In virtual teams, communication is likely to be on the need basis and for the achievement of a particular goal. Manage Communications The methods of managing communication in virtual project team also differ from the other methods. In project management, 90% of the time focuses on communication, which makes no major difference between the collocated and virtual project teams. The key difference in virtual teams setup is that the managers of such projects need to understand specific communication needs of the team members and their communication style. Besides the initial face to communication, the virtual project teams are connected to each other through different communication forms. However, there are constraints of bounding the teams together since virtual medium of communication places the risk on the performance of the project that require management. To mitigate such risks, the project managers have to understand the vitality of selecting an appropriate medium of communication for every message. Considering the cultural difference based on the multi-national of the team, the members could prefer different medium of communication. For example, in our group, we had only 1 British and 5 Chinese which made it important to select the most appropriate method of communication since Britain and China have different cultures. Keep People Motivated Whenever the project teams feel isolated and disconnected from the team, there is a direct correlation to the motivation of the members of the virtual project teams. Besides, there is a possibility that “out of sight” could mean less focus on the virtual project and more on the activities associated with people physically close. Therefore, it is important that the project managers seek for ways of keeping the virtual teams engaged and motivated while undertaking the project. Focusing on the regular phone calls and web meetings are important methods of achieving such goals. Most of the steps undertaken to motivate the collocated team could as well be utilized; however, for the virtual teams it is critical to adjust the communication style to suit the virtual space. Regular assessment of the effectiveness of the Remote Communications While setting up the project management teams, it is important to note that the virtual working arrangements do not suit every person. Since virtual project teams work differently, the members need to use different working style and have varying degree of comfort through the electronic communication technology. To manage the communication of the virtual project teams effectively, it is important for the project managers to assess the accurate level of comfort and willingness of each member within the virtual setting and look for the behaviours that could signal that the virtual project teams are experiencing disconnections. (Dooley, 2011, pp.30) For example, in our spaghetti and marshmallow bridge project, we designed and built the bridge using the marshmallow and spaghetti. To ensure the achievement of the desired results, it was critical to ensure adequate communication on requirements of designing the bridge. Effective communication determined the outcome of the results. If the virtual project team experiences a problem, there is need to assess the problem, converse with the team members, and prepare mechanism of addressing the issue. Use Virtual Collaboration Tools The subject on virtual collaboration tools is broad. Within the virtual project teams, there is need of ensuring effectiveness of the members. To ensure the achievement of such goals, some requirements that teams should focus on include phones with the ability to conference, online web meeting spaces, and mobile computers (Dooley, 2011, pp.35). There are modern online communication systems allowing the members to see if a member is online or not to guide whether to engage using instant messaging tools or not. Moreover, the project managers have the responsibility of ensuring that the team members are trained and have no problems associated with utilization of the modern technologies used by the team. Conclusion Effective team members could only be developed using considerable structures. Moreover, while developing effective project team members, it is important that the team leaders have multiple skills of managing the members. Considering the multidisciplinary and multidimensional nature of the project management, it is important that the project manager be in a position of plugging up any shortcomings. Consequently, the team members have the responsibility of fulfilling the role of effective team member features with an aim of achieving the project goals on time and within the budget besides ensuring prevention of conflicts with the others within the project. On the other hand, the virtual project teams are increasingly becoming prevalent. Several economies could be achieved from the virtual teams, which offer great potential of harnessing the talent from several locations. The management of the virtual teams could be richly awarding and require similar core competencies for managing the collocated teams. However, virtual project teams require addition of elements considered sensitive for the communication style and ensuring the existence of appropriate styles are utilized. References Carroll, B. (2002). 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