Balanced Project Teams
By Russ Finney
Remember being a child when two team captains were tasked with picking their own team members for an organized activity? Each captain would take turns choosing a player from an increasingly smaller and smaller group whose members tended to grow more and more insecure with each passing non-selection. How were the teams decided? Sometimes team member selections were based on skill, or on popularity, or on friendship, or on instinct, or (worst of all) by default. But no matter the method, one fact was painfully obvious, some just new how to pick 'um and some just didn't!
What is it that makes one individual adept at creating winning teams, while another person may seem to create unproductive or conflict ridden combinations? One explanation seems to point toward a person's ability and instincts to identify and assemble a team which is balanced. This sometimes means giving up personal preferences and deferring to a choice based on reasoning and common sense.
A balanced project team would probably display one or more of these characteristics:
- Opposing viewpoints are constructively represented.
- An air of professional respect exists.
- Varying levels of skill are represented.
- Open challenge to group thinking is permitted.
- Some team members tend to be in a teaching mode while others are in a learning mode.
Find the Key Players
Once the workplan is completed and the staffing needs are understood by level or resource type, the time has arrived to determine the actual people who will fill the specified roles. This endeavor is usually easier said than done. Competing priorities, fixed responsibilities, and future availability all play an important role in initially determining who the potential candidates are for consideration. Once that has been accomplished, the next step is even more difficult. Each project team candidate's personal and technical strengths and weaknesses must be weighed against their anticipated project role. Also, various potential combinations of individual team members should be examined, and any apparent advantages or disadvantages of each of the groupings should be considered.
Baseball great Casey Stengel once said "it's easy to get good players. Getting them to play together, that's the hard part". The key is to assemble the correct skills mix to get the job done. Occasionally, this may mean scheduling the project in order to get the right people involved at the right times. This is much preferable to taking anyone who happens to be available at the moment.
Characteristics of Successful Projects
Have you ever noticed the word gets out pretty quickly about successful projects? The people working on the team know a good thing when they see it, and those who may not be a part of the team, still can sense an air of progress and success. Some of the reasons given for the emergence of an outstanding project environment are shown below:
- All work products are created for a reason.
- The end objective or deliverable is clear to everyone.
- A spirit of both hard work and fun is present.
- A sense of organization is present.
- A feeling of accomplishment and momentum exists.
- Beneficial deliverables are being produced.
- Ideas and opinions are encouraged without criticism.
All of which are things fully in the control of the team leadership and the team members themselves. Even projects which may be experiencing difficult times can be brought around, if an increased level of focus and commitment is brought to bear on the quality of the overall project environment. In reality, no real reason should exist for any project team not to be able to consider themselves working on a "good" project.
Copyright © 1999, Russ Finney, All Rights Reserved