PROJECT MANAGEMENT ASSIGNMENT

Question: Managing And Leading A Project Team

Presented by: Tsala Olama Pierre-Marie And Ngoueth Christine

Field Of Study: Operations And Supply chain Mgt

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

There is nothing more important to the success of a project than the people who make up the
project team. Projects are common nowadays, mainly being sponsored by the World Bank,
WHO, the government, charities or other non-governmental organizations, public and private
companies as well as individuals. Each and everyone have a project in mind be it the long
term or what so ever. The association of project management defined a project as a human
activity that achieves a clear objective against a time scale. In simple words, a project can be
defined as a unique undertaking to achieve specific goals that requires resources and activity.
Projects are often characterized by the following; uniqueness, change, uncertainty. A project
team could be understood as an independent collection individuals who work together
towards a common goal and who share responsibility for specific outcomes of their
organizations. All project team members have to contribute, complete and collaborate with
each other to facilitate the progress of the project work.

Stages Of Team Development

1. Forming:
Group members are unclear about the task and their roles and responsibilities. They
are figuring in what to do, how it should be done, and how they fit in. Team members
turn to be very polite and edit their comments to avoid offending each other. Little is
accomplished.

2. Storming :
This stage is characterized by the struggle to define the task and individual
contributions towards achieving it. Subgroups may form conflicts, may surface and
there is lack of unified purpose. Team members do not trust each other enough to deal
with difficult issues or constructively solve problems.
3. Norming:
Team members begin to resolve their differences by developing behavior norms. They
begin to develop trust and consensus about how to move forward. More is
accomplished at this stage because the group has reached agreement about how to
proceed.

4. Performing:
In this stage, team members agree on what needs to be done and how to do it. They are
able to communicate effectively, and have developed strategies for dealing with
conflict. The group is visibly moving forward to accomplish its goals.

5. Adjourning:
Once the task is accomplished, the team needs to celebrate its achievements and
identity lessons learned. Key points should be documented too assist future groups.
This is also the stage where the project is handed off to become part of ongoing
operations.

Team Capacity Planning And Team Building

Team capacity planning is a process for assessing the amount of time a project could
take, determining whether a team can handle it and ensuring the efficient use of
employee time. When successful, this process allows staff to perform at their best
while prioritizing tasks effectively. It helps you coordinate work to support the
completion of deliverables and progress through a project. Conducting this
methodology will provide an efficient allocation of skills, increased employee
engagement, the targets will be more realistic and the productivity level will increase.

Team building is the process of taking a collection of individuals with different needs,
backgrounds and expertise and transforming them by various methods into an
integrated, effective work unit. In this transformation process, the goals and energies
of individual contributors merge and support the objectives of the team. Team building
is valuable and important because of it many long term impacts as it fosters a sense of
ownership and empowerment, strengthened confidence, approaches to community
work acknowledgement and it minimize an over reliance on outside experts as source
of knowledge.

Reason For Project Team

- Smooth flow of the project: Managing a project can be a bumpy ride because of
scope creep, increased timelines, managing demands of clients and satisfying
stakeholders involved. When there is a team work, it will enable to easily schedule
and address ongoing requirements as well as additional requests without breaking
a sweat.
 - Enables a creative approach: When team members trust and work brilliantly with
each other, they tend to share a lot of ideas and brainstorm on multiple aspects of
the project.

- Improves risk appetite: Managing a project and working together as a team gives
you the strength and appetite to take risks. This is generally not plausible when
working alone as the fear of failure will creep in and sometimes you may fail.

- Improves project execution: Good team work increases the speed of completing
each task, which would not be possible if you are working alone. The pools of
various skill sets combined together enables this possibility.

- Effective feedbacks: The best feedback is the one you give and get informally and
during day to day activities. This is only possible when there is enough amount of
trust among team members. You can also create regular meetings and get best
results out of them because each team member is willing to participate without any
hesitation.

Managing Project Team

By the word managing, we have manager who is the one who collaborates with stake holders
to meet common objectives. Project team or team members are those doing the actual work of
the project. They have a more strategic role in the organization and are focused on the
financial gains rather than personal interest of employees. Acquiring the project team is often
complicated by the fact that the project management team will not usually have direct control
over everyone they would like to have involved in the project. They may need to negotiate
with others who are in position to provide the right number of individuals with the appropriate
level of knowledge and experience

Managers get their power mainly from five sources that have been widely accepted literature
and are taught to this day. These sources of managerial power are:

-Legitimate or formal or bureaucratic power which is power granted to the manager under
charter by the organization peers that is power than a former manager gave.

-Reward power which is power given to a manager because of it ability to confer or withhold
rewards.

-Coercive power which is power predicated entirely upon fear and makes the subordinate
believe that he may be deprived of something if he does not comply.
-Expert power which is power a manger has because of his superiority in performance,
knowledge and expertise compare to others.

-Referent power is a type of power that stems from a manager ability to inspire and influence
work. This authority may come from the extend to which people admire, respect and a
specific manager.

The Learning Cycle In Project Team

The learning cycle is a project management framework used in project team made up of four
processes which are Plan, Do, Check, Act. This four steps approach is the most widely used
methodology for implementing continuous improvement. Businesses that take this approach
aim to continually repeat the process always identifying new opportunities to use the cycle to
improve.

-Plan: In this stage a team identifies a challenge they want to overcome or an opportunity they
hope to take advantage of.

-Do: This stage is the team opportunity to test their idea for change. This stage typically
includes a small experiment or trial run.

-Check: The business gathers and evaluates it small experience results. If it proves successful,
the company will implement the change on a wider scale.

-Act: In this final step, a business takes action according to the insights it gained after
analyzing its experiment.

Managing Project Conflicts

Project conflicts can arise between multiple stakeholders in a project. The reasons can be
anything. When a conflict arises, it negatively impacts all the people involved from the top
level management to those working in the lower management. The sources of project conflict
could be:

-Conflicts due to unclear task expectations. Team members in some scenarios do not have
clarity on how to proceed with the project tasks and in the absence of a clear road map, task
management will take a haphazard path where some team members will work in a certain
direction while others will proceed in a totally opposite direction.

-Conflicts due to poor leadership. As a ream manager you need to guide your team on the
right track by setting measurable goals, distributing tasks and monitoring the progress of
tasks.
-Lack of communication. Many times it so happens that team members work in silos and are
not aware of the progress of each other tasks. This lack of communication can stall the
progress of projects.

-Varied working styles. Any project is a combination of multiple tasks. Usually, each member
is assigned a distinct task. Hence, to ensure that the task is completed on time, there needs to
be proper coordination amongst the team members.

Some solutions to these conflicts could be:

-Accommodation

-Compromise

-Avoidance

-Collaboration

Managers Vs Leaders

MANAGERS LEADERS
Have entire authority over the project as they can Have less authority over the project as they make
take decisions on the overall task and main issues decision and assign tasks about particular part of
regarding the organization the project
Set short term goals as they only concerned about Set long term goals as they believe in change,
the assigned tasks and duties by the superior of they plan for long term goal with broad vision
the organization
Managers usually turn to direct and impose Leaders inspires and motivate people in their
duties to subordinates surroundings with an enthusiastic mindset
Manager appoints, they are require to appoint Leaders implement they are responsible for
staff from well deserving people in accordance providing instructions, giving directions and
with the needs of the company guiding a team to achieve the set objectives
Supervise and control team members. Define objectives and monitor the progress of a
team.