Project Management Course
#8 Communication case studies
#9 Beyond the Basics
Welcome to Project Management: Beyond the Basics.
No matter what industry you work in and whether or not you have a job title that includes the phrase ‘project manager’, projects are all around us.
While the traditional skills of project management are focused on managing time, cost, and quality, the skills of an effective project manager go beyond setting timelines and assigning tasks to resources. There is a whole range of additional skills you need beyond the technical ones.
We’ll be referring to several resources. The full references for these, should you wish to read further, will be given in the final step of the last module.
As you study this course you’ll reflect on what skills project managers need to be effective, focusing on four key areas:
-What skills do project managers need to master?
-How can you deliver a project in a complex world?
-How can you manage teams effectively?
-Enlarging your perspective on projects: What are we doing it all for?
-Now tell us something about yourself and why you’re interested in project management in the discussion group.
Please note: Throughout this course, you’ll be asked to share your thoughts in discussions. This will often involve talking about examples from your own work experience. When you contribute to a discussion, either on this step or later in the course, please remember not to identify individual people or companies unless they’re already public knowledge.
#10 What skills should a project manager master?
Being an effective project manager requires a broad range of skills that often vary depending on the context, scale, and nature of the project.
However, there is a core set of skills that every project manager should develop in order to be successful.
As the chartered body for the project profession, APM identifies the following six areas in which a project manager should develop their skills.
Communication
Project managers spend a lot of their time communicating with many people in a variety of ways. It is extremely important to consider all aspects of communication as early as possible in the project life cycle and recognize that it is not a one-way process and that dialogue will mean that conversations and exchanges will evolve as they unfold.
Communication takes many forms. To be effective you need to consider not only the message you want to pass on but also the method for communicating. Many factors affect the success of communication, including cultural influences, the mood of the team, the method of communication chosen and the language used.
A project manager should consider a range of oral and written communication forms, including online collaboration which has been proven to have several advantages related to how knowledge is codified and how creativity is enhanced when online and co-located teams are combined (Gupta et al., 2009). Online collaboration requires specific practices to successfully introduce it and to manage interactions between team members (Garrison, 2006).
You will look more closely at communication skills later this week and also in Week 3, when you address team management.
Negotiation
Getting a ‘good deal’ is probably something that you have heard many times. But what does it mean in practice?
Nowadays, a good deal is a win-win agreement for both sides, rather than a bargain for just one party. Hence, reaching an agreement means being able to negotiate with others. This is not an easy task – you’ll need:
a good plan to establish the objectives of the negotiation
an understanding of the economic aspects involved in the negotiation and of the mutual value sought through the collaboration
to define how the collaboration will be managed – this may need to be set out in written documents.
Negotiation is a complex topic. In Week 3 you’ll learn more about negotiation inside a project team, addressing topics such as giving and receiving feedback, or adapting your management style.
Time management
The ability to manage your own time – prioritizing work by balancing what is most important with what is most urgent – is a vital skill for any project manager. It means prioritizing activities according to a set of criteria, one of which is minimizing risk – a skill highly associated with planning abilities.
In Week 2 you will look at how to plan projects according to their context, considering their volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, and selecting a suitable project approach to manage them effectively.
Knowledge of the regulatory environment
‘All project-based work operates within a legal and regulatory framework relevant to the industry and countries where the work is performed’ (APM, 2019).
Being able to identify and understand relevant norms and regulations, and their influence on a project, is a critical ability. Beyond international and national laws, the regulatory environment encompasses internal organizational norms, standards and rules related to aspects of the project outputs such as the quality of product and services, as well as how project activities must be conducted.
This wide-reaching regulatory environment has an impact on several project processes, including risk analysis, requirements to be considered in project planning and execution, as well as assurance and governance arrangements.
Ethics and standards
Behaving ethically is a key requirement of any profession. All leading professional bodies, including APM, have a code of professional conduct to set standards and guide professional development. These standards are designed to support ethical behaviour by giving guidance in circumstances where there is a risk of some form of wrongdoing.
Professionalism and ethics go hand in hand. A project manager’s ability to recognise and resolve ethical dilemmas is fundamental to remaining effective and gaining the trust of key stakeholders. You will delve into this important topic more later this week.
Continuing professional development
In a rapidly changing world, all professionals should assess any gaps in their competence and find ways to fill them by actively engaging in continuing professional development. Attending courses or studying online are good ways to develop and further the skills needed for effective project management.
APM, the chartered body for the project profession, offers a progressive structure for career development, from courses offering the ‘fundamentals’ of project management through to ‘management’ and ‘professional’ levels of understanding that include more advanced learning and assessment. APM qualifications also offer a clear route to achieving the Chartered Project Professional standard.
You might also be interested in developing your managerial skills and knowledge in areas such as strategic management, finance and human resource management. The Open University offers formal undergraduate and Masters qualifications, as well as Executive Education courses in these areas.
In addition to formal education, you can keep abreast of the latest thinking by reading recent research on project management topics published on APM’s website or by following trends and news articles in magazines such as Project or the International Journal of Project Management.
Finally, you may decide to work on your knowledge and skills gaps by engaging in new work experiences that offer you the opportunity to learn. For example, a mentor may provide you with guidance on how to do new activities and you could discuss your progress with them. Even without the support of a mentor, it is important for you to take time to reflect on your learning journey – especially if it is based on new activities. You may want to take notes and write your thoughts in a learning journal as you study this course to help you remember important learning points.
#12 Speaking from experience
The demands posed on a project manager
A photo that represents being busy: lots of pairs of hands operating a laptop, a phone, a calculator, etc.
As you will have seen in the previous video, project managers are often asked to address very different needs.
Meredith and Mantel (2012) summarised these in the following categories:
Ensuring adequate financial resources: Quite often, projects do not have sufficient financial resources due to over-optimism in the planning phase. A project manager needs to understand and manage trade-offs between resources, and find viable solutions to avoid being unable to complete activities due to a lack of funds.
Engaging and motivating project members: A project manager needs to negotiate the availability of project team members, and if necessary find compromises (ideally a win-win solution) should other projects be competing for the same human resources. The project manager often has to understand the personal aspirations of members of the project team to understand how they are motivated.
Dealing with issues: Projects rarely follow the initial plan as issues often arise that require change. Issues may range from changes in the availability of resources at the beginning of a project to sudden changes in project deliverables before the end of the project. Even though these issues may have been identified (and even addressed) in risk analysis, the project manager is still called upon to resolve them.
Making trade-offs: A project manager should recognize the importance of reconciling trade-offs between the elements of cost, time, and quality, and the overall scope of the project. Moreover, they may need to make trade-offs between different projects.
Maintaining a balanced outlook: Project managers are often asked to work in stressful conditions and to cope under pressure in critical conditions while preserving the motivation of team members.
Control communication: More than any other manager, project managers are asked to communicate widely with a range of stakeholders. This means not only being on top of what is happening in the project itself but also communicating the right information at the right time, as it is required. Managing communication properly is a fundamental demand posed by every project manager because it has a direct impact on project performance, so we are focusing on this later in the week.
© The Open University
#13 Reflecting on skills
In the first part of this week you’ve learnt that project management skills are quite diverse, and that being a project manager requires a wide range and combination of skills.
Remember, though, that there is no one perfect skills mix. Instead, your skills need to adapt to context – and that might be the context of the project, the specific organisation or the type of project being undertaken.
Meredith and Mantel (2012) expand on this reflection by comparing the knowledge developed in organisational units with the knowledge developed by project managers. Typically, knowledge in organisations develops in units, and members of those units become increasingly specialised in one area of expertise. The figure below uses the example of a marketing department and its subunits, where managers and employees operate and refine their knowledge and capabilities according to a functional structure.
This approach of increasing specialisation and breaking down knowledge does not apply well to project management. Project management requires a systems approach: in order to understand the significance of a component in the project, one must understand the functioning of the whole system.
For instance, in a complex project such as designing a new car, the project manager would not be expected to be an expert in each process in the same way that the specialized designers and engineers are. However, the project manager should know how the different systems interact sufficiently well to be able to facilitate the specialists (Meredith and Mantel, 2012, p. 104).
Why does a project manager have any actual say in a project if they don’t have specialist knowledge? The answer lies in considering the question of accountability.
The project manager’s systemic role means that they are ultimately responsible for the project and so accountable for its development. On the other hand, functional managers and specialized project team members provide the expertise to make critical decisions on the aspects of the project under their control and responsibility.
This dynamic has the potential to create clashes between the two sides: the project manager cannot delegate full project control to a specialist, although they recognize the need for specialist expertise on the project. This is where negotiation skills become fundamental to project success.
Matson (1998) represents this contrast with the metaphor of the specialized caterpillar that becomes a generalist butterfly. This implies that specialized employees can become project managers – but only if they evolve into butterflies by being able to assume a systems approach!
# 14 Evaluating project stakeholders
One of the most important activities that a project manager can do is to deal with stakeholders.
‘Stakeholder’ is the term used in most instances to refer to individuals or groups who have an interest or role in the project, program, or portfolio, or are impacted by it (APM, 2019). Stakeholders can be project team members or people who are not directly involved in delivering the project but have an interest in it.
You can identify stakeholders and analyze how far they may help or hinder a project by creating a stakeholder map. There are a number of ways of doing this; the APM Body of Knowledge suggests the following model:
In this model, stakeholders are classified according to:
their level of interest in the project (high or low, at the bottom of the figure above)
their power to influence or change how things are done (high or low, on the left)
their support in relation to the project (for or against the project, at the top).
It is important to remember that stakeholders’ positions will often not be static: over time they may move from one quadrant to another. This makes it fundamental to monitor stakeholder engagement throughout the project and note possible changes in their position. By doing so, you may identify a stakeholder who is initially in favour of the project becoming quite critical of it; in which case you could investigate why their opinion changed, which would help you to understand how to address the situation.
An alternative way of representing stakeholders and their relationships is illustrated in the social network diagram below, which shows examples of the social interactions between stakeholders. This approach can be useful for tracking stakeholders’ possible alliances, underlying political agendas, and personal ambitions.
This visualization technique can reveal who needs to be engaged with, or how relationships and shared agenda can be leveraged to stimulate motivation and commitment. Moreover, they can reveal (and be helpful in understanding) project risks relating to stakeholders’ behaviour.
© The Open University
#14 Who are the stakeholders? (video)s
#15 Communicating inside and outside the project team
Who does a project manager need to communicate with?
The figure below represents four fundamental lines of communication for a project manager: the sponsor/line manager, clients, the project team and with other project managers (represented by peers in the diagram).
Communications inside the project team are very important. One of the most relevant and sometimes neglected stakeholders is the project sponsor: the person in the organisation who endorsed (and potentially initiated) the project, or who assumed responsibility ensuring that resources are available to it.
Wysocki and McGary (2003, p. 202) suggest that you should pay particular attention to the information flow to sponsors, and two strategies that may be effective at doing this:
At the beginning of the project, a meeting with the sponsor should clarify what information is needed. This is an opportunity to ensure that reporting is in line with the sponsor’s needs and expectations, without requiring time-consuming adjustments for either party. Asking the sponsor to define information deemed essential and the level of detail required is a much better strategy than proposing and generating a series of reports that may not be required and could even create confusion. For instance, the sponsor might be not an expert in project management and therefore may not be conversant with an earned value report or complex analyses on project expenses.
The flow of information to the sponsor should be regular. Critical issues should be highlighted clearly to preserve the sponsor’s commitment to the project.
Wysocki and McGary conclude that in projects, ‘you cannot not communicate’. Informing stakeholders is a key role of the project manager. If information is provided to stakeholders in a way that is easy to use, this enhances their engagement with the project.
© The Open University
#15 Communicating with stakeholders (video)
~~ Three steps to thinking more ethically about decisions
In the previous step, you reflected on two issues related to professional conduct: acting with honesty and integrity and acting within your capabilities.
Karen and John dealt with these issues because their skills enabled them to perform coherent actions:
They discussed the situation together. Talking something over with a colleague you trust helps you find ideas and options that one person might miss.
They mapped out their initial options in clear and contrasting terms. Creating alternative outcomes like this helps you to highlight the ethical choice.
Karen talked about it with colleagues over the weekend. Hearing what your colleagues think about a choice that you face helps you see the situation in a wider context.
They looked beyond the immediate situation and imagined what each of those contrasting options might mean for the reputation and future of the firm.
More generally, APM recommends a three-step approach to deal with ethical issues in projects:
1. Remember why ethics matter
Codes of conduct, such as the APM Code of Professional Conduct, are important. They set out how you’re expected to conduct yourself as a professional.
Although you should remember what codes of conduct expect you to do, you should also remember why they ask you to do those things. This matters because:
understanding the ‘why’ of a rule makes it easier to apply the ‘what’ of the same rule
while we might not always remember the ‘what’, we tend to remember the ‘why’, and that can be important when you’re under pressure to make the right decision.
2. Reflect on what you do
There will be occasions when you’re not sure about the ethics of a particular situation. Sometimes it can feel easier just to get a job done without asking awkward or unfamiliar questions. But the hallmark of a professional is the trust that the public puts in them to think things through carefully and make the right decision.
This means that you should not just take the easiest path to complete something. Give yourself a little time to reflect upon the rights and wrongs of a situation. For example, framing your options into opposing points of view helps you to distinguish the more ethical option and follow it.
It often helps to consider your situation from a wider perspective. How might it look to your friends and family if you described it to them over dinner? How might it look if it featured on the front page of the main trade magazine? Perhaps even consider what someone you’ve always admired, but have known, would think of the decision you’re about to take.
Opening up your situation will make it easier to make a more ethical decision.
3. Set out to be better at ethics
The project profession is full of good people. While they all strive to make good decisions, there can be occasions when decisions creep in that are not so good. It’s important, in facing up to those situations, that we work to make a better decision next time around. Mistakes can happen to us all at some point, but what defines us as professionals is how we respond next time.
One approach is to recall the various stages that occurred in the run-up to that bad decision and think about what you could do differently next time, to increase the chances of making a better, more ethical decision. Being prepared in this way can make a big difference.
© The Open University
#14 Who are the stakeholders? (video)s
#14 The different approaches explained (video)
~~ The linear project lifecycle
It is important that projects have a controlled start, middle, and end.
A structured project lifecycle plays a significant part in making this happen. During the lifecycle, the project progresses from an idea or hypothesis to reality, following defined stages and events.
The lifecycle is a management tool that determines how resources are allocated and the activity of the project team. It enables decisions to be made in a timely way and allows us to coordinate project work and project outcomes with activity elsewhere in the organisation.
The choice of linear or iterative approaches will shape the project lifecycle and determine how the project work is organized and performed.
A typical linear project lifecycle may look like this:
Concept: The development of an idea (is there a need for this project?) and an assessment of its viability (can we do it?).
Definition: A detailed description of the project, and its plans and requirements, including a full justification of the work.
Deployment: The implementation of the project plans, and testing the project work to ensure that it will deliver the intended outputs, outcomes and benefits.
Transition: The handover of the project outputs to the project sponsor and users, and the closure of the project.
To understand what this looks like in practice, think about the process of building a house. You wish to build a house because you need somewhere to live, you have the money, and you have found a competent builder to do the work. That’s the concept stage. The builder (or, more likely, an architect or surveyor) produces detailed drawings and plans, and makes estimates of the quantities of materials needed, and the time and cost to do the work. That’s the definition stage.
Deployment is when the construction of the new building takes place. There is a certain predictable order in which things are done: foundations, walls, roof, and so on. You might agree to pay the builder at the end of predetermined phases of work, and if so, you may expect to inspect and approve the work carried out and authorize the builder to continue. In linear projects, these stop/go points between stages – known as gate reviews – are a way of being able to check that the project is on course to deliver the expected outputs and outcomes, and, if necessary, to make changes.
Finally, the transition is when the work is complete and the house is ready for you to occupy. The project is closed.
Linear projects are common. What do you think are the advantages of structuring projects in this way? Can you see any disadvantages?
IN SUMMARY
The linear project lifecycle is a straightforward approach to managing a project where each step happens one after the other, like a sequence of events. It's like following a recipe, where you complete one step before moving on to the next. This method is good for projects with clear, well-defined tasks and requirements, as it ensures a structured and organized process. However, it may not be suitable for complex projects where changes or uncertainties are common, as it can be less adaptable compared to more flexible project management approaches.
In linear projects, such as construction, one stage follows another predictably: each stage must be completed before the next one can begin. This is why the linear lifecycle is often referred to as a ‘waterfall’, where the project is conceived as a cascade of activity from one stage to the next.
The linear project management lifecycle assumes:
very good information and understanding of the project goal, solutions, and expected outputs and outcomes right from the start the scope of the project will not change significantly – in the example of building a house, the linear approach works because your requirement for a house does not change once the builder has started work.
Linear lifecycles work well in construction, engineering, and manufacturing, where we can be confident that the project scope, and the conditions in the macro environment, are sufficiently stable and low-risk to allow large capital investments. Dividing the project into phases with intermediate deliverables (such as foundations, walls, and roof in the house example) means that scheduling and budgeting can be worked out in advance and adjusted at the conclusion of each stage. The phases also provide opportunities to give assurance to the sponsor and stakeholders that the project is on track.
The linear approach is an efficient way to deliver projects in stable environments when you:
have good information about the required outputs can be sure you understand what users and stakeholders need and want to have expertise in the domain.
Some businesses employ variations of the linear project lifecycles for their everyday work. For a house builder, all jobs are linear projects; the same applies to much of the work carried out by solicitors, hairdressers, dentists, and taxi drivers, for example.
Linear approaches are less effective in volatile or uncertain environments. Like a ski jumper speeding down the slope, a linear project cannot change course easily or quickly – once the first stage is complete, it becomes more difficult and costly to alter the project scope. This helps to avoid ‘scope creep’ (sometimes known as ‘requirements creep’, or the uncontrolled expansion of requirements and expectations on a project), which is a common cause of project failure. Their inflexibility may mean that linear project lifecycles are not effective in complex, ambiguous, or changing environments.
© The Open University
#14 Understanding iterative projects (video)
The iterative project lifecycle
The iterative project lifecycle differs from the linear one in several ways.
Typically, iterative projects do not begin with detailed specifications, project plans, and schedules; they may start with just an idea, hypothesis, or vision. Working in short cycles, iterative projects allow us to test these ideas and get feedback from users or the business. This feedback can then be used to decide whether a project is viable to carry out.
In an iterative project, we seek to create something of value with each iteration rather than only at the end of the project. In the case of a software project, we may plan to create a given number of features in each iteration, and we expect these features to be usable by (and possibly even sold to) our users. This means that a single iteration involves specifying, designing, coding, and testing all at once. In a linear project, specifying, designing, coding and testing would be done one after the other over a longer period of time; in an iterative project they are done all at once in a shorter period of time – usually two to four weeks.
Working iteratively, the project team is able to deliver the outputs regularly and frequently, rather than all at once at the end of the stage or project. This allows organisations to benefit from user and stakeholder feedback, and to get an early return on investment while retaining the ability to adapt and change course as the business environment changes.
Iterative projects are in many ways more predictable than linear ones. Iterative projects usually use ‘timeboxes’ or ‘sprints’. As the digital project manager described them, these are effective ‘mini-projects’, each with a goal, plan, and clear list of priority tasks to be completed and outputs to be produced.
Sprints have a fixed duration, usually of two or four weeks. The time limit forces the project team to focus only on the highest-priority requirements and to flex the scope to produce the desired outputs within the time available. Working in this way means it is possible to change course or radically rescope (or even stop) the project at a relatively low cost.
Earlier this week you considered how the VUCA framework can help to understand and respond to challenges. Thinking about the challenges you face at work, how might the iterative project approach help? Can you see any difficulties or disadvantages in this approach?
© The Open University
#15 Project lifecycles in practice (video)
~~ Understanding project teams
How are project teams different from other kinds of team in the organisation?
They are usually:
temporary, coming together for the duration of the project with the purpose of delivering its outputs and outcomes
multifunctional, usually consisting of representatives from different areas of the organisation
diverse, including individuals with a variety of skills, knowledge, experience and perspectives relevant to completing the project.
For simple projects, people may take on roles part-time alongside their regular roles in the organisation. The roles of the project sponsor, project manager, and team members are convenient ways to bring the necessary business expertise into the project team without disrupting the organisation’s day-to-day operations.
For more complicated and larger projects, project managers and teams often work full-time for the duration of the project. As projects get larger, so the variety of roles increases: a project manager could be supported by a range of specialists, such as schedulers and risk managers, or – in large organisations – by a programme/portfolio management office (PMO). The largest projects may involve multiple organisations working together, in which case team members will span suppliers, partners and customer organisations, often across international borders and time zones.
A project team (APM, 2019)
© Association for Project Management (APM) (2019) APM Body of Knowledge (7th edn), Princes Risborough: APM.
All of this presents the project manager with particular challenges:
How do you get a common understanding of the purpose and aims of the project among the many different people both within the organisation and beyond?
How do you foster collaborative working to allow various team members to work together to deliver the project’s outputs and outcomes?
What experience of these challenges do you have? Please share your experiences, and any successes you have had in meeting the challenges, in the discussion section.
© The Open University
~~ Forming teams for projects
As a project manager, you face the challenge of being responsible for delivering the project’s outputs and outcomes. But you cannot do it alone – it requires a team to deliver a project.
In most cases, as a project manager, you:
have little or no influence over who joins the team
may be given a team that lacks all the knowledge and skills needed to succeed
may not have enough of the people with the right skills at the right times in your project lifecycle.
There are some tactics that you may be able to use to overcome these challenges. For example, it may be possible to negotiate the availability of team members, or to use project funds to source contractors outside the organisation with the necessary skills.
In reality, your ability to build a ‘dream team’ for your project may be limited. After you accept responsibility for delivering the project, you’ll have a project team assigned to you. Success comes from learning to lead, develop and safeguard the team: creating the necessary conditions for team members to interact, collaborate, solve problems and deliver valuable outputs in a healthy and sustainable way, is a vital aspect of the project manager’s role.
Does the prospect of such a challenge and responsibility excite you? Perhaps you find it daunting or have some tips to share in the discussion?
© The Open University
~~ How teams work
Some theoretical models can help you understand the dynamics of team formation and development.
Perhaps the best-known of these was the one developed by Bruce Tuckman in the 1960s (although it has been updated more recently). Looking at the model provides some insight into practices you can use to facilitate the process of forming and leading a team throughout its role in the project.
Tuckman identified several stages of team development, which he called forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning:
Forming: the first phase of team formation, when the team members come together. Usually the team members are positive and engaged at this point: their interactions are polite and respectful, and they are eager to get down to work. Some may be anxious about what lies ahead, or their ability to cope with the demands of the project.
Storming: once the team members start working together, tensions may soon come to the surface. These tensions may be provoked by disagreements about how to achieve the project goals, and which processes or approaches to follow. Teams may storm due to personal differences between members, frustrations with others’ ways of working or resistance to the leader.
Norming: the team members cohere into a team and commit to collaborate together to pursue the team goals. Individual differences are put aside and agreement is reached, along with norms or rules, about how the team will work together to achieve the collective goal.
Performing: the team is now able to collaborate and work productively, with minimal supervision or input from outside.
Adjourning: when the work is done, the project team disbands, and the members move on. This may be a moment for celebration of the team’s success, but it may also be experienced as a sense of loss.
Forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning.
Image used with permission of owner. © 2008–2019 Scott M. Graffius
Do you recognise these stages from your experience of teams? What kind of behaviours did you witness in each stage? Please share your thoughts with other learners in the discussion.
© The Open University
~ The project manager’s role in teambuilding
As a project manager taking on a newly formed team, it’s your responsibility to create the suitable conditions for the team members to interact, communicate and collaborate.
It’s particularly important on large and complicated projects, and when working with remote teams, to have structures and processes for regular team interactions. These could be meetings, events or other structured interactions designed to bring together diverse people and functions – orienting them to a shared vision and purpose, while creating an inclusive, open and trusting environment.
A simple but powerful thing to do at the start of the project is to hold a launch event, either face-to-face or virtually using videoconferencing. This is an opportunity to get together everyone involved in the project and develop a common understanding of its vision, goals, deliverables and benefits. Failing to establish these from the outset can create problems later, in the form of inadequate outputs and wasted time and money.
To do this, it can be helpful for the sponsor to attend and explain the business case in straightforward language that all the team members can understand, and to put the project in context by explaining the expected outcomes and benefits to the organisation. It is motivating for teams to know they have organisational support and commitment for the project.
Another useful technique for building team cohesion and effectiveness is known as ‘chartering’. This technique comes from agile software development but it can be used in any project. Chartering expresses and captures the team members’ initial understanding of the project’s purpose and expected outputs. It can help to forge agreement and commitment to work together to reach the desired outcomes.
A team charter is an agreement written and agreed by all members of the team, usually during an interactive workshop. It usually contains three parts:
Purpose: what the work is about, including the project vision and goals (business case), project lifecycle and deliverables, key stages/events in the lifecycle, etc. It provides motivation and inspiration and binds the team together to build commitment.
Alignment: how the team will work together to achieve the project goals. It might include agreeing on team rules, modes for collaboration, common language, any project events, artifacts, and ways of working.
Situation: how the project fits into the wider organisation and its strategy. Here the charter might include norms or rules for how the team interacts with stakeholders, how it accesses and uses the non-human resources committed to the work, and how progress is demonstrated.
The process of creating a team charter helps to accelerate developing a common understanding and to clarify misunderstandings and concerns. To use terms from Tuckman’s model, chartering helps to move the team through the ‘storming’ phase and into ‘norming’. Creating and periodically revising a team charter is especially useful when working with remote teams, as it helps to keep teams aligned, committed, and cohesive.
With your experience as a project team member or project manager in mind, what kind of launch event would you find helpful? What does the event need to achieve to be successful? Who should attend? What activities should be included? And how will you, and the team, perform differently as a result? Let us know your thoughts about these questions in the discussion.
© The Open University
A project manager must enable the newly formed project team to reach its best performance as smoothly and quickly as possible.
There is a growing appreciation in the project profession that the best project outcomes emerge from more diverse teams, where people feel respected and safe to be themselves, to express their individual perspectives, and use their unique skills.
You’ll explore the dimensions of diversity (social, identity, and cognitive diversity) and how diversity affects team performance in different environments.
In this video, Steve Williams – a management consultant and volunteer crewmember of the UK’s emergency sea rescue service (the Royal National Lifeboat Institution) – describes how the RNLI creates a team in ten minutes, from the moment an emergency call is received to the moment the rescue vessel is launched to sea – and how these teams prepare to face the unknown.
In the video, Steve mentions the SMEAC briefing – this acronym refers to a five-point briefing covering Situation, Mission, Execution, Administration, and Command. SMEAC is a way of organizing information about situations used by emergency and security services and the military.
© Video: Courtesy of Steve Williams and Passenger Technology Group Ltd/Content: The Open University
~~ Forming teams in complex environments
A project manager must enable the newly formed project team to reach its best performance as smoothly and quickly as possible.
There is a growing appreciation in the project profession that the best project outcomes emerge from more diverse teams, where people feel respected and safe to be themselves, to express their individual perspectives and use their unique skills.
You’ll explore the dimensions of diversity (social, identity and cognitive diversity) and how diversity affects team performance in different environments.
In this video, Steve Williams – a management consultant and volunteer crewmember of the UK’s emergency sea rescue service (the Royal National Lifeboat Institution) – describes how the RNLI creates a team in ten minutes, from the moment an emergency call is received to the moment the rescue vessel is launched to sea – and how these teams prepare to face the unknown.
In the video, Steve mentions the SMEAC briefing – this acronym refers to a five-point briefing covering Situation, Mission, Execution, Administration, and Command. SMEAC is a way of organizing information about situations used by emergency and security services and the military.
© Video: Courtesy of Steve Williams and Passenger Technology Group Ltd/Content: The Open University
Teams do not develop simply by sitting and working together.
Creating and maintaining the right conditions for the team to perform and succeed needs the project manager’s continuing attention from the beginning to the end of the project lifecycle.
Earlier this week you looked at the importance of the project manager’s role in structuring and facilitating interactions between team members. Here, you will look at the project manager’s role in coordinating and maximising the team’s knowledge resources and learning ability.
This video explores another model for understanding the social processes that teams go through in forming, interacting and collaborating.
~~ Unlocking team learning
In the last module, you learned that the choice of linear, iterative and hybrid project methods and lifecycles is determined by the degree of project complexity and risk, and the volatility and uncertainty of the project environment.
Similarly, there is an optimal level of variety and diversity of team members for projects in predictable and complex environments.
Broadly speaking, for simple or predictable projects in stable environments, a homogenous team will often do better than a more diverse one. By comparison, highly diverse teams whose members do not know each other have a disadvantage.
They need to find out who knows what, and they need to learn to trust that the person with particular skills is credible and reliable. Sometimes this trust may be lacking where there are stark differences in age or socio-economic background.
As a project manager, your task is to support the team to understand and utilise its collective knowledge resources. There are some very simple techniques to help with this. For example, asking each member of the team to create a profile with their name, photo and relevant skills and experience, and display the profiles in the team’s physical or online workspace. These profiles could also include some personal information, such as the individual’s leisure interests or favourite book, film or band – this kind of personal information is especially helpful in forming remote teams who may never meet face to face. You could also try learn-at-lunch sessions (sometimes known as ‘brown bag’ lunches), where team members take turns to share their experience and learning from the current project or past projects. These are easy to do with distributed teams using videoconferencing.
Remember the importance that the lifeboat captain gives to assigning clear roles and responsibilities? All crew members know who is responsible for what, and there is no doubt or room for error. By allocating a task to an individual, you are signalling your recognition of that person’s ability (or potential) to do the work successfully.
What ideas can you share for building trust and enabling team members to discover their capabilities? What experiences of either excellent and high-performing teams (or even poorly performing teams) can you share around building trust and learning about each other?
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~~ Developing the project team
A project manager must support the team to get the best from its collective capability.
Team members may have impressive individual knowledge and skills. But if they are unable to combine and use this collective capability to best effect, the project may not deliver the expected outputs as efficiently as it could within the constraints of time, cost and quality.
A simple way to go about this is to assign roles to team members based on their individual strengths. Recognising a person’s expertise is known to be very motivating, as is allowing people to get on with their work autonomously, without constant interference and micromanagement.
Remember the example of the lifeboat crew. The captain allocated roles thinking about both the skills needed for the present as well as the pool of skills and experience that crew members would need in the future. There is a direct parallel here with project management. Which tasks might you assign to less experienced team members so that they are able to learn new skills to take back into the organisation once the project is complete?
No one likes to do the same thing repeatedly, no matter how good they are at it. Always relying on the same person also has risks for them and the organisation: the individual could become complacent and inattentive to the quality of their work, and the organisation would be over-reliant on one person with no back-up.
For a project manager, variety may be a better tactic. Aiming to construct a varied role for each member of the team, combining technical mastery with new skills-acquisition across all the areas of work involved in the project, could build a stronger team overall. This could include aspects of stakeholder management, scheduling, risk, change and benefits management, as appropriate.
Share your perspectives on motivating project team members in the discussion section. What risks and benefits can you see in assigning tasks to less experienced members of the team? What impact might this have on your own motivation and that of others?
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~~ Giving and receiving feedback
Every project manager, and every team member, benefits from feedback.
Regular and actionable feedback is vital for successful project work in an environment of change and uncertainty:
Signals from the environment help us to make sense of, and to negotiate, a changing organisational context.
Feedback from stakeholders on a project’s outputs confirms that we are doing the right thing, and encourages continuous improvement.
As team members, we need feedback from each other on our performance. Feedback is so important for team members in situations of complexity, where the goals may be unclear (or shifting), and where progress may not be linear or predictable.
But how do you give feedback as a project manager? Types of feedback that may be appropriate in a given project-based situation include:
appreciation – expressing gratitude or approval of another’s effort
advice – making suggestions about another’s performance and particular behaviours that should be repeated or changed
evaluation – assessing a team member’s performance against expectations, or an explicit or implicit set of standards.
© The Open University
~~ Giving and receiving feedback
Every project manager, and every team member, benefits from feedback.
Regular and actionable feedback is vital for successful project work in an environment of change and uncertainty:
Signals from the environment help us to make sense of, and to negotiate, a changing organisational context.
Feedback from stakeholders on a project’s outputs confirms that we are doing the right thing, and encourages continuous improvement.
As team members, we need feedback from each other on our performance. Feedback is so important for team members in situations of complexity, where the goals may be unclear (or shifting), and where progress may not be linear or predictable.
But how do you give feedback as a project manager? Types of feedback that may be appropriate in a given project-based situation include:
appreciation – expressing gratitude or approval of another’s effort
advice – making suggestions about another’s performance and particular behaviours that should be repeated or changed
evaluation – assessing a team member’s performance against expectations, or an explicit or implicit set of standards.
© The Open University
~~ Adapting your management style
You’ve already seen that different project approaches – linear, iterative and hybrid – lend themselves to projects in environments with differing degrees of change, ambiguity and complexity.
You’ve also learnt that teams with high diversity and low social cohesion do better in complex contexts than homogenous teams who know each other well, and who tend to be more efficient at delivering simple projects in predictable environments.
Given this spectrum, the project manager must adapt their approach to context.
Traditionally, in linear projects, the project manager’s role has been directive; they are responsible for:
developing the project plan
directing resources
ensuring progress by directing and managing the project team.
However, even in a simple, linear project, you cannot afford to overlook the team interaction and learning processes that you have been exploring this week. Research suggests that homogenous teams are less inclined than heterogeneous ones to interact other than superficially. When working with homogenous teams, be prepared to make regular, deliberate efforts to get them to interact, through team-building and motivational activities, games, social events and training to upgrade skills. You may need to work a little harder at this, and use a little more imagination, when teams are working remotely, but the principle is the same whether your team is physically co-located or remote.
The approach with iterative and hybrid lifecycles is quite different. Here, the project manager:
is more that of a peer to the team rather than a superior
coaches rather than bosses the team, enabling them to self-organise and make decisions collectively
removes impediments to the team’s progress and productivity
protects the team from interruptions or interference from elsewhere in the organisation, giving it the autonomy to choose how best to do the work and create the most value from the project.
Members of diverse teams are naturally inclined to interact and get to know each other, but their differences may produce misunderstanding, competition or conflict. So while you may not have to work too hard on encouraging interactions in highly diverse teams, be prepared to sometimes have to act as a broker or intermediary.
~~ Safeguarding the team – and yourself
By its nature, project work creates pressure to deliver in time and to the required quality. Some people find the pressure energizing and motivating, but at times, pressure can create stress and become unbearable. And remote working may lead to social isolation and problems of physical and mental health.
The Association for Project Management and the wider project profession now recognises responsibility for safeguarding project managers and project teams. Recognising when such pressure occurs, and how team members react to it, means that you can develop tactics to safeguard individuals from stress, while fulfilling your responsibility to deliver the project to the agreed scope.
Workplace stress can be defined as the adverse reaction that people have to excessive pressure or other demands placed on them. It is important to understand where stress can occur on projects, which can include when:
people perceive they have little control
there is excessive work to complete
there is disharmony or conflict with others in the team or wider stakeholders
people have other concerns or commitments outside of work.
Everyone is different and everyone’s situation is dynamic. Someone may be able to cope with pressure, but changes in other areas of their life (including outside work) may suddenly reduce their resilience and lead to stress.
So what can you do, as the project manager?
You need to watch for and manage pressure and stress at the individual level.
You may be able to alleviate pressure on individuals by altering the project schedule or revising the scope of work assignments.
Proactively encourage the team towards a more healthy and sustainable balance and pace.
Where possible, you should lead by example: working in a healthy and sustainable way, looking after your own physical and mental health, and sharing ideas and resources for wellbeing with the team and encouraging them to do the same.
As the project manager, you must also safeguard yourself. You may be feeling daunted by the range and complexity of the tasks covered just this week! It is certainly a demanding role. Learn to recognise your own reactions to excessive workplace pressure: you could talk to close friends or family about how your mood and behaviour change when you are under pressure – they probably notice the changes more than you do.
Earlier in this module, we asked how you feel about taking on the responsibilities of being a project manager. Think back to your response to that question. Based on what you have learned this week, what aspect of managing project teams is likely to cause the most pressure for you? What can you do to prepare for this and to succeed?
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Summary of Module 4
The ability to form, manage, motivate, develop and safeguard project teams is perhaps the most important skill you need to develop in order to progress your career in the project profession.
Managing project teams is different from managing other kinds of teams:
Project teams are temporary. This can create a sense of excitement for some team members, while others may struggle to commit fully to the project.
Project teams are multifunctional. This brings the benefit of having diverse skillsets and experience working together, although it also brings the challenge of aligning diverse perspectives and interests to a common purpose.
Project teams are diverse. Social and cognitive diversity is positively related to adaptability and creativity in a complex world, but diverse teams can create conflict.
As a project manager, you have a key role to play in enabling and facilitating the team on its path from formation to performance, and then in disbanding the team and returning the members to the organisation with fresh experience and newly formed skills. Some of this work is more directive (such as allocating responsibilities and tasks, and managing performance); some is more facilitative (like creating the right conditions for teams to succeed, and allowing team members the space and autonomy to do what they do best). Sometimes it means being a coach, sometimes a servant, sometimes a shield.
Delivering successful projects is a team pursuit, not an individual one. Rarely as a project manager will you have the luxury of building a project ‘dream team’ with members handpicked for their technical skills and interpersonal qualities. In most cases, you will accept responsibility to deliver the project outputs and expected benefits with the team you are given – and this means you must learn to get the very best out of the team even when under pressure and in volatile and uncertain circumstances.
This is challenging work, and it is natural to feel awed by the challenges. APM provides a range of resources and training, as well as a supportive community of practitioners, to enable you to succeed in this most exciting and fulfilling role.
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~~ Developing a broader view on projects
Members of a project team will often focus on just getting the work done on time and within budget. The quality dimension often receives less attention – and yet it is critical for project success.
Dr Martin Barnes first described the relationship of time, cost and output (the correct scope at the correct quality) in 1969.
The quality of deliverables, whatever they are, is fundamental to achieving project objectives. The figure below, also known as the Iron Triangle (Weaver, 2007), suggests that quality is strongly interrelated with time and cost.
The Iron Triangle: the scope of a project is a balance of time, cost and qualityTrading the triple constraints of time, cost and quality (APM, 2019, p. 59)
© Association for Project Management (APM) (2019) APM Body of Knowledge (7th edn), Princes Risborough: APM.
The results of a project are influenced by balancing time, cost and quality. For instance, the level of investment in a new movie production, whether big or small, certainly has an impact on the overall quality. With low budgets, scenes may be filmed mostly indoors in one location, with only a few extras or supporting actors hired. High-budget movies enjoy more elaborate sets and locations, larger casts and potentially more effects.
But how can you manage project quality? This is one of the topics in this week of the course. We will address it in terms of planning, allocation of resources and control.
Before moving on, look at how project management has evolved through considering the Iron Triangle. The second edition of the APM Body of Knowledge (APM, 1994) defined project management as:
The planning, organisation, monitoring and control of all aspects of a project and the motivation of all involved to achieve the project objectives safely and within agreed time, cost and performance criteria. The project manager is the single point of responsibility for achieving this.
In the latest edition (APM, 2019), project management is defined as:
The application of processes, methods, knowledge, skills and experience to achieve specific objectives for change.
What is the difference between these two definitions? The more recent one implies that time, cost and quality do not sufficiently address a series of other benefits connected to the project. Specifically, the new definition relates to the organisation or project stakeholders achieving strategic goals (Atkinson, 1999).
In your opinion, in what circumstances is it important to consider success criteria other than the three elements of the Iron Triangle? Share your thoughts in the discussion section.
© The Open University
~~ What is quality [discussion]
Several definitions of the concept of quality have been proposed.
A generic one (Pass, 2006b) is:
The totality of the attributes of a good or service which meet the requirements of buyers’ or customers’ quality.
The idea behind this definition reflects the thinking of Joseph Juran, who defined quality in the 1950s as ‘fitness for use’ (quoted in ASQ, 2019).
This is mostly consistent with the definition of quality provided by APM (2019, p. 214):
Fitness for purpose and degree of conformance of the output of a process or the process itself to requirements.
Now reflect on the following statements about quality. Which ones do you agree with?
- Quality should be focused on the customer’s needs.
- Quality is focused internally.
- Quality should be considered from the beginning of the project.
- The execution phase of a project is the most critical to achieve quality targets.
- Quality issues should be discussed openly to find corrective actions.
- Quality problems should be hidden from customers and possibly also managers.
- People are keen on producing quality outputs.
- Team members do not produce quality outputs without close supervision.
Share your thoughts in the discussion below.
~~ The cost of quality
According to Kerzner (2009), the two different classes of costs related to quality are:
conformance costs – induction of team members, quality control, audits and validation of quality
nonconforming costs – recalls, reworks, warranty repairs and handling complaints.
Consider the impact that the second class of costs can assume. For example, in some cases, a failure in a product or a reduction in service could cause a breach of contract, compromising the entire project.
A different classification of costs is shown in the following figure:
The figure shows how investing in quality initially may generate future savings. The two bars of the chart are in fact interrelated: lowering the cost of quality at the beginning of a project (such as lower investment in reliable design) may increase costs in the future (for example through more internal failures).
Kerzner identifies the following groups of costs:
Prevention costs are all measures taken to reduce quality issues in the future. They refer to the satisfaction of quality requirements and encompass quality planning, attention to the design of the product or service, training project team members, and selecting suppliers and contractors.
Appraisal costs relate to the evaluation of how well the quality requirements have been met. They include the costs for inspections, quality checks on the products or service from suppliers, lab tests, and eventual design reviews.
Internal failure costs refer to costs incurred when the output is not acceptable and cannot be delivered. Typical examples include evaluating defects and the costs relating to rework, repair and scrap, or other corrective actions taken before a product or service is delivered to the client.
External failure costs are incurred when clients recognise that their requirements were not met. This includes managing complaints, customer visits, warranty repairs and other corrective actions.
The figure above shows that an initial investment in prevention raises costs at the outset – time spent on designing products or services that meet solid quality requirements – has the potential to reduce future risk of internal failures.
The figure also shows a slight increase in prevention costs over time. This is not inevitable if attention is paid to reducing potential costs arising from design flaws, improperly trained workforces and poor assignment of tasks and responsibilities.
Kerzner suggests that more than 50 per cent of quality costs are due to product and service failure. These costs decrease as prevention and appraisal costs go up – as shown in the following figure, which illustrates the components of the total cost of quality per unit.
The total cost of quality per unit is a U-shape on the figure. Note that ‘100% good’ remains largely unachievable, and is not the point where the total cost of quality per unit is minimised. In other words, the total elimination of defects may be not cost-effective.
The optimal point to minimise the cost of quality is the intersection point where a unit’s appraisal and prevention costs equal the internal and external failure costs, which is highlighted.
© The Open University
~~ Creating a quality plan
How can a project manager ensure that project objectives, including quality, are achieved?
The figure below shows a series of critical activities that should be achieved in order to ensure quality:
Preparing a quality plan is fundamental to ensuring quality. The quality plan may conform to quality standards (such as ISO 9001) and acceptance criteria. Acceptance criteria are the general requirements of the project-owning organisation relating to the quality of outputs.
A quality plan should include:
the project’s overall quality requirements – these may be informed or even dictated by the organization’s general policies, but should also be discussed with project stakeholders and certainly the client a breakdown of the project into different parts and activities connecting quality assurance and control as relevant to each part (also known as a work breakdown structure, or WBS)
how the project will verify that the outputs meet requirements, and the pass/fail criteria that relate to them
the timing of checks, tests and audits to be conducted (a Gantt chart is recommended)
who is responsible for each quality-related activity and what resources are required to conduct the activity (such as a lab, special tools or machinery, skilled personnel, or external suppliers).
The quality plan is typically discussed with and approved by the project sponsor. It is an iterative process that happens in cycles, rather than something that is fixed from the outset.
Quality assurance and quality control are the main fundamental processes to ensure that the quality plan is adhered to.
Quality assurance refers to any activities and managerial processes to ensure that the quality requirements stated in the quality plan are achieved. The project manager has a key role to play by:
making sure that the relevant processes are in place to confirm that the scope of the project is in line with requirements reassuring stakeholders that their objectives for beneficial change will be achieved, including the planned level of quality.
Quality assurance also fulfills all the legal and regulatory requirements and data collection to create the performance measures related to quality, as defined in the quality plan.
Quality control is a set of activities (such as checks and inspections) to confirm that the quality requirements have been met. In other words, quality control activities verify that the project outputs meet the acceptance criteria defined during quality planning and that the outputs are fit for purpose to the sponsor.
This may require technical tasks such as continuous monitoring, lab tests or other more complex controls. Where there is a gap between a requirement and an output, further analysis should identify and reveal the problem, and put in place corrective actions.
A quality audit is an independent evaluation of quality. Its role is to:
ensure that the project meets the defined requirements and that all the regulations related to the outputs are met, including those specific to project activities (such as safety rules in construction projects)
consider whether a proper control system is in place and whether controls have reported any anomalies
consider whether proper corrective actions have been taken when needed and whether any opportunities for improvement were identified (Kerzner, 2009, p. 889).
© The Open University
Planning for quality
In this video, a project manager comments on his quality requirements and problems he had in the past.
After watching the video, consider the following questions:
Which quality assurance actions you would put in place?
Which quality control action would you suggest introducing?
What aspects should be considered in an audit?
Share your reflections in the discussion.
~~ Resource loading
You should be aware of how important it is to create a clear schedule for a project. You have probably learnt how to sequence activities, perhaps using a Gantt chart. However, good project planning should consider the availability of resources, be they human or physical. How do you do this?
Typically, resources are assigned to projects according to their availability – taking into consideration their resource loading, or in other words, the amount of resource required to perform an activity in the required time. For instance, an engineer may be working on a construction project for 50 per cent of their time. This means that it is still possible to allocate their remaining capacity to other projects.
The workload needed from resources can be represented in a bar chart, like the one below. Demand for resource units is on the vertical axis, across periods of time on the horizontal axis. This representation is called a load diagram (Meredith and Mantel, 2012, p. 403) or is sometimes referred to as manpower loading (Kerzner, 2009, p. 591), if it focuses on human resources.
Let’s consider the example of organising a company event. The figure above shows that 40 hours of an office assistant’s time is needed in Week 1, then 50 hours in Week 2, and so on. The maximum capacity line indicates the maximum level of available resources: in this example it is set to 40 hours per week, because this is the maximum number of hours worked by the only office assistant in a week.
You may wonder why some weeks are so busy and other are not, resulting in an unbalanced workload. One explanation may be that activities were planned solely based on their sequence in the project, without considering the availability of resources. This situation could be addressed by levelling resource loading across the project; we will look at how project managers can complete this important activity in the next step.
But first, it is important to acknowledge the complexity of resource loading across organisations that run many projects simultaneously. The following figure shows the resource loading of an engineering company across its various projects:
The loading chart in the figure shows periods of:
overallocation, where the demand for resources is higher than their availability
overcapacity, where the availability of resources is higher than the demand for their use.
To create this figure, the resource loading of multiple projects has been aggregated across projects.
Typically, activities in organisations develop around portfolios, programmes and projects.
Programmes incorporate a set of related projects and change management activities in order to achieve a defined set of objectives. Programmes are unique and transient in their nature: once their objectives are achieved, they can be considered finished. Programmes are typically more complex and broader than projects, and deliver some element of the organisational strategy.
Portfolios are used to select, prioritise and control projects and programmes according to the organisational strategy and capacity to deliver. Their goal is to balance the decision on investments and the evaluation of consistency of projects and programmes with the strategic objectives or operational efficiency.
Portfolios are particularly used to evaluate resource capacity issues and resource loading across projects and programmes.
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What is resource levelling?
Resource levelling involves balancing the workload on resources in order to align resource usage with their available capacity. This can be done by shifting the scheduling of project activities within their available floats. You may recall that ‘float’ is a term used to describe how flexible a deadline is and to what extent an activity can be rescheduled.
The advantage of resource levelling is a stable workload, which enhances morale and reduces the risks of stress. The cost advantages relate to a steady distribution of resource cost over time. This becomes important where contract workers are concerned: the cost of selection, hiring and then layoffs are often high, and could be reduced through better scheduling.
To understand how resource levelling works, try to solve this simple problem: consider three activities with different durations using the same resource, as represented in the diagram below, without assuming any prioritisation between them. The activities require a different number of workers per day, as reported in the figure.
The resulting resource loading chart is:
In this example there are three activities that start together and require a maximum of eight workers for two days, six workers for one day and four workers for two days. This situation is unbalanced.
How can the three activities be scheduled differently to achieve a better levelling of resources?
Possible solutions would be to either start Activity A on the fourth day:
Alternative resource loading chart 1 (adapted from Meredith and Mantel, 2012)
© Meredith, J.R. and Mantel, S.J. (2012) Project Management: A Managerial Approach (8th edn), Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Or to start Activity B on the third day:
Alternative resource loading chart 2 (adapted from Meredith and Mantel, 2012)
© Meredith, J.R. and Mantel, S.J. (2012) Project Management: A Managerial Approach (8th edn), Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Even the solutions in a simple example like above illustrate the complexity of levelling and provoke some reflection: would it be better to prioritise Activity A or B? Would it be possible to start Activity C with just two workers and then increase their number? In a complex project with many activities using the same pool of resources, or even a programme or a portfolio of programmes, and you can see how difficult this could become.
Several software packages have features that support project managers to assign and level resources. Simple booking systems visualise the calendars across each resource specific to a single project. More sophisticated systems enable the sharing of pools of resources across projects, integrating their use on different projects to highlight (and therefore avoid) overloading. Finally, the most advanced systems enable resource levelling according to the rules defined by the user: modifying activity scheduling and their assignment to different competing projects.
© The Open University
~~ Strategies for resource levelling
What possible strategies are there to manage the overallocation of resources without adding new resources?
Look at the strategies below, presented in order of their impact on the project considering its duration and the cost of resources.
1. Delay non-critical activities within their available float
Non-critical activities do not appear on any critical path for a project, which means that they can ‘float’ within a certain time period without affecting the overall duration of the project. The project manager can delay when they start and the project will not be affected as long as the activity is completed within the period of float. This also means that project costs will not be affected, since they will only be deferred. The figure above shows the effect of this strategy on an activity.
2. Extend non-critical activity durations within the available float
This strategy is similar to the previous one. The activity starts as planned, but its duration is extended within the limits of the maximum float available to level the resource load once more. Again, the impact on the project duration and cost is zero.
3. Delay critical activities
This more impactful strategy focuses on levelling the workload as well as rescheduling activities on a critical path. If an activity on a critical path is delayed, then the whole project is impacted by that delay, which may also affect project costs (in the form of penalties for late delivery, for example).
4. Extend critical activity durations
As with the second strategy above, this approach focuses on starting the critical activity on time but extending its duration to spread the workload over more days, weeks or months. The impact here is on project duration; as in the third strategy above, project costs may also be affected.
5. Split an activity into non-sequential pieces
Splitting activities into parts frees up an overloaded resource and allows other concurrent activities to be done. The effect is to introduce a delay in the completion of the activity, which could affect the overall project duration and cost if the activity is critical.
© The Open University
~~ Strategies for resource smoothing
An alternative way of dealing with resource overload is resource smoothing.
This focuses on preserving the planned project duration and its deadlines by applying the following strategies.
1. Adding new resources to the project
Adding new resources to a project (or substituting a current resource with a new one with greater capacity) inevitably affects project costs. Costs can be calculated based on the cost per unit of the new resource used. For instance, if a more experienced engineer is added to a project, their cost per hour would need to be accounted for and would generate a cost variance, which will appear in the analysis of the earned value.
It is important to consider that adding a new team member would require coordination with other project members. You may also need to allow some time for learning and training to increase the new resource’s efficiency on the project. These additional elements could take considerable time and effort in addition to the time spent finding the resource in the first place.
2. Using overtime
Overtime is a possible solution to increase the availability of resources.
The aim here is to keep the project aligned with its schedule. However, risks of using overtime are that:
it increases project costs
the availability of resources to work overtime needs to be considered carefully
if team members are working under stress, there’s an increased risk of mistakes being made (Kerzner, 2009, p. 795)
the additional pressure on resources that it causes could cause burn-out.
Apart from the important consideration of wellbeing, each of these risks also has the potential to impact on quality of delivery as well as cost.
© The Open University
~~ A comprehensive view on resource overload (discussion)
What’s the difference between resource smoothing and resource levelling?
Resource smoothing focuses on preserving planned deadlines but increasing project costs; resource levelling does not change the current capacity but focuses instead on rescheduling, with a possible impact on project deadlines.
The following figure, from the APM Body of Knowledge, compares the two.
At a higher level of impact, some projects are not simply rescheduled or assigned more resources, but may be subject to a revision of project scope by the project sponsor. This involves a broader reflection on the overall project and means reconsidering how time, cost and quality combine in the project.
A typical example is the review of large infrastructure projects such as railways. Often such projects are rescaled due to increased costs; ultimately, projects appear markedly different to the original plans. The consequences of revisions may impact on the client and the wider group of stakeholders and can lead to the loss of further follow-on work (Kerzner, 2009, p. 529).
Now think about MTD, the water installation events company and the Glasgow event you’ve been following in the videos so far on this course. Looking at the figure above, do you think it would it be possible to apply a resource levelling approach?
~~ Problems that affect scheduling resources
What problems are there with scheduling resources?
Meredith and Mantel (2012, p. 419–20) identified several, which are listed below:
So-called thoughtless optimism of some project managers who fail to conduct a sufficiently solid risk analysis and then consider delays to be inevitable. A more careful analysis would probably identify some causes of risk.
Setting demand equal to resource capacity is an over-optimistic approach that does not consider the risk of resources becoming unavailable. Good practice instead sets resource loading at 85–90% of capacity (Meredith and Mantel, 2012, p. 407).
Goldratt (1997) describes the ‘student syndrome’: students who typically ask for more time to complete an assignment and then defer the work until the last possible date, losing any possibility of building in float and risking further delays with no ability to allow for unexpected events.
Multitasking to reduce idle time may provide welcome variety, but combining several different schedules can also cause delays to some of those projects. Where resources are scheduled and focused on one project at a time, this would not occur. Moreover, switching between projects may in itself cause inefficiencies.
Complex schedules with many dependencies across activities risk longer project durations than may actually be needed. Managers tend to reduce project durations to push project teams to work hard. From a motivational perspective, however, this may be counter-productive as it can lead to a lack of commitment.
Motivation is more associated with situations where there is a moderate, rather than high, risk of failure. If the project timescales are perceived as unachievable, this can be demotivating.
In a game-playing dynamic, project estimates can become less accurate and more unrealistic, as they are not truly linked to a solid risk analysis.
If historically senior managers tend to have taken the view that project team estimates as too pessimistic and therefore reduce estimates, then project team members are more likely to inflate their estimates as a means of counteracting this tendency.
© The Open University
~~ A different approach to scheduling
Goldratt (1997) suggests a different approach to scheduling by focusing on resources while building the schedule, rather than the duration of activities (note that this approach should not be confused with critical path analysis.)
The following figure shows three points that relate to the time taken to complete an activity:
A is an optimistic estimate of the activity duration
B is the most likely duration
C is the worst-case scenario.
The worst-case scenario is the duration typically used for scheduling purposes but as you can see from the pink line on the figure, Goldratt maintains that many activities finish earlier than this.
In other words, some activities are very likely to finish earlier (between A and B), so using less time. The remaining time to C is not used effectively, since in most of cases any subsequent activity will not start earlier.
© The Open University
~~ Conflict and its potential sources
Projects often produce conflict. But why is this?
Let’s start with a definition of conflict, from Schmidt and Kochan (1972, p. 363):
Overt behavior arises out of a process in which one unit seeks the advancement of its own interests in its relationship with the others.
A more recent definition by Jones and George (2018, p. 557) maintains that organisational conflict is:
The discord that arises when the goals, interests, or values of different individuals or groups are incompatible and those individuals or groups block or thwart one another’s attempts to achieve their objectives.
What do these two definitions have in common?
Conflicts arise when interests or objectives are put at stake. They can develop on different levels around us, ranging from inter-organisational conflicts between multinationals – think of Apple and Samsung – to inter- and intra-group conflicts and interpersonal conflicts.
According to Meredith and Mantel (2012, p. 149), in the context of projects, conflicts can be classified in three ways:
Different expectations between groups working on the same project: Objectives may differ between groups of individuals from different departments or units working on a common project. For instance, they may have different views and expectations on the project, its importance and its timing, or the level of commitment they are inclined to devote to it. Some examples refer to time-allocation and the definition of priorities and costs.
Uncertainty on who has the authority: When there is uncertainty on administrative or technical procedures, it may not be clear who has the decision-making responsibility on, for example, how resources are allocated. There could be conflict around authority, such as what authority the project manager has versus the departmental or functional managers in an organisation, or what authority the project manager has on technical matters – especially in projects where specialists are involved.
Interpersonal conflicts between project stakeholders: How individuals interact and behave may result in clashes of personality, behaviour or working style, and so on. One example to think of where this occurs is between the client and the project manager.
The following table summarises the categories of conflict (goals, authority and interpersonal) and the parties interested:
Parties-at-interest Goals Authority Interpersonal
Project team Schedules, priorities Technical Personality
Client Schedules, priorities Technical
Functional and senior management Schedules, priorities, labour cost Technical, administrative Personality
Think about a conflict you have either been aware of or involved in. Can you identify its sources according to the categories in the table? Share your thoughts in the discussion section.
© The Open University
~~ Dealing with conflicts
Before delving into possible approaches to resolve tensions and conflicts, it is important to note that a certain level of conflict can be beneficial in organisations.
It may even lead to improvement in their performance, as shown in the figure below.
A complete lack of conflict (A) is unlikely to stimulate managerial creativity and this incentivises conformity and complacency, which reduces the effectiveness of decision-making.
An optimum level of conflict is where managers are open and frank with each other about their different perspectives in decision-making (B). Any discussion or disagreement is with the intention of improving how their organisation functions.
Conflict ceases to be useful and becomes detrimental to performance (C) when it escalates to a point where managers are wasting time and resources to pursue their own goals and win battles rather than make good decisions for the organisation.
Some alternative strategies offer the potential to deal with conflicts and these are summarised in the figure below.
The horizontal axis in the figure represents the desire to meet the needs of others and refers to how much a person or a group is open to accept and share others’ objectives. Conversely, the desire to meet personal needs (on the vertical axis) comes from focusing on personal objectives.
Compromise happens when each party is equally open to balance their needs with those of a counterpart, and make necessary concessions. Another positive way to solve conflicts is through collaboration. Rather than concede ground, both parties focus on finding solutions that fulfil both their needs. It is different from the previous strategy, because it’s not just a ‘give and take’ compromise.
While collaboration and compromise resolve conflict, the other strategies do not achieve that result. In accommodation, one party concedes their position in favour of the other – usually the more powerful one. If the parties pursue an avoidance strategy, they are more likely to ignore each other, and the conflict remains unresolved.
Conversely, competition results in a state of continuous conflict where each party focuses on achieving its own goals without focusing on resolving the conflict.
© The Open University
~~ Negotiation in projects
Negotiation is an important skill for project managers – whether they use it with clients, stakeholders or members of their project team.
It can be defined as: the process by which two or more parties attempt to achieve agreement on matters of mutual interest.
Negotiation is a complex and skilled process; it is not the purpose of this section to cover it exhaustively. There are many situations in project-based working where ‘deals’ need to be made, from agreeing to include a functional expert to support the project, to negotiating large contracts with suppliers – and everything in between (APM, 2019).
According to Meredith and Mantel (2012, p. 161), a project manager should try to:
see that conflicts are settled without harming the project objectives (it is often more an issue of who should do an activity, when and how, rather than deciding whether the activity needs to be done or not)
allow and foster honesty among the parties – if behaviour appears dishonest, it can quickly develop into mistrust and therefore jeopardise future negotiations point each party towards solutions that satisfy both parties’ objectives – a win-win solution would represent a successful conflict resolution.
Fisher et al. (2012) suggest a win-win approach that they call a principled resolution, based on the following points:
Separating the problem from the people: Parties can become emotional, so a clear definition of the problem may help to focus attention on (and address) the underlying issue – and thereby reduce interpersonal conflict.
Focusing on interests and not on positions: Conflicting parties can stick to their positions and so not leave room for negotiation: for example, ‘We cannot do this work in one month – we need two.’ However, a more accurate understanding of each party’s interests could facilitate a negotiation.
Say for example that one party has a concern about delivery in one month because current resources are restricted; if it is possible to find additional resources, this would reduce the perceived level of risk.
Seeking out options for mutual gain: In order to achieve a win-win solution, it is better to consider a wide range of solutions that satisfy the interests of each conflicting party.
Using objective criteria: A clear focus on defined and agreed objectives, and having clear criteria around these, reduces the risk of holding onto fixed positions by any one party. In this way there are objective ways to measure and evaluate what is needed, which in turn makes it easier to identify options and negotiate.
© The Open University
~~ Applying the lessons learnt (video)
This video describes an instance where there was conflict in a project and where the project manager had to take actions to resolve it.
From what you have learned this week, what strategies were used to manage quality, resources and conflict? Are there any others that you might have used in the same situation?
Share your thoughts in the discussion.
© The Open University
Checking your understanding
Summary of Module
Now it’s time to test your learning.
In this final week of Project Management: Beyond the Basics, you looked at the complexity of managing projects in organisations.
You delved into the notion of quality and how it can be managed in combination with time and cost. You have understood the importance of creating a quality plan and performing the different activities related to quality management throughout the project: quality assurance, quality control and quality audit.
You’ve looked at resource management, considering different strategies to deal with over-allocation and overcapacity of resources: resource levelling and smoothing. A different scheduling technique, ‘the critical chain’, has been introduced to complement your knowledge and give you a powerful and alternative tool to manage projects.
Finally, you’ve looked at the importance of managing the level of conflict in a project, analysing the possible sources of conflict and the approaches you can adopt during negotiation.
Now go to the next step to futher examine the knowledge you’ve gained from this course.
© The Open University
End-of- Open University Course & summary
Congratulations – you have completed the course modules and lessons from open university UK, you have just one more module from TeamGantt and you'll become a certified Project Manager! We hope you have found the content interesting and discussions engaging.
You have learned that project managers need a wide variety of skills – from quantitative abilities such as managing time and cost, to soft skills like negotiation – to be an effective project manager. You have delved into some of the fundamental skills that project managers need, such as stakeholder management and ethical decision-making.
You then looked at linear and iterative project approaches, and you discovered how to combine them to create hybrid project approaches suitable to specific contexts. You then explored some of the most important skills you need to progress your career in the project profession, namely how to form, manage, motivate, develop and safeguard project teams, and how to adapt your leadership style to get the best results according to context.
Finally, you have considered the complexity of managing projects in organisations, and how using a quality plan, resource management, conflict management and the ‘critical chain’ scheduling technique will accomplish this.
Now take the last module which will last for 7 hours, but not to worry, you can break it down and learn for just 1 or 2hours daily.
© The Open University
Class Description
Project Leadership is not just a bolt-on to Project Management: it's how we do Project Management well. I write and speak extensively about Project Leadership - so, here, I share five of my best tips with you.
Tip 1:
Everything Starts with Personal Leadership
• Say what you mean
• Deal fairly with people
• Do what you say you will do
Tip 2:
Leadership is at a premium in Tough Times
Compare the project leadership approaches of the Purple Bus and Yellow Bus drivers. Purple Bus Leadership is the key.
Tip 3:
There’s no 'One Style of Leadership'
I discuss the principle of Situational Leadership: fit your leadership style to the individual in the situation.
Tip 4
There are four Essentials of Project Team Leadership
• Individual
• Plan
• Team
• Communication
Tip 5
The Acronym LEAD will Give You your 4 Project Leadership Priorities
… for how to go about your day.
• Listening
• Encouraging
• Asserting (make things happen)
• Deciding
Downloadable Material
? Sample Project Manager Job Description
? A Guide To Hiring Project Managers
? Characteristics of A Great Project Leader
Crafting your project management process -
How to Estimate Project Costs -
Get a free project requirements document template. https://teamgan.tt/3xbyky8
Class Description
Good project requirements are like GPS for project success: They show a clear path to done, with each critical step laid out. In this class, you’ll learn how to gather and document project requirements, align your team and stakeholders, track and manage change, and confirm project requirements have all been met.
Downloadable Materials
? 8 Questions Requirements
? Requirements Checklist
? Requirements Template
Creating Accurate Project Plans -
Class Description
Project planning is a critical step in any project because it lays the groundwork for success. See what goes into a well-crafted project plan and how to gain buy-in from your team and stakeholders. In this class, you’ll learn how to:
Explain the importance of a project plan to stakeholders
Gather and unpack key project details
Engage your team and stakeholders in the planning process
Build and present a solid project plan
Downloadable Materials
_Quick Guide To Project Planning
Homework - Create A Project Plan
Sample Plan Download
Setting and Managing Expectations -
Class Description
Expectations are the heart of every project relationship. Manage them well, and you’re sure to win (and keep) trust. See what tools and tactics you can use to ensure you’re painting a clear project picture at every step.
In this class, you’ll learn how to:
Use scope to set and guide project expectations
Keep expectations in check as the project progresses
Define clear project roles and responsibilities
Establish an effective structure for communication
Downloadable Materials
Preparing Your Organization For Successful Projects
Sample Project Brief
Sample Project Scope
teamgantt-project-status-report-template
Sample Internal Kickoff Meeting Agenda
Sample Stakeholder Kickoff Meeting Agenda
Sample Standup Meeting Agenda
RACI Matrix Template
In this lesson, we unpack the meaning of scope creep and share common scope creep examples you may find in project management.
Discover 5 simple techniques you can use to avoid scope creep on your projects, plus what goes into a good change request. Learn more in our free guide: https://teamgan.tt/3KItYUD
Class Description
Scope creep has a sneaky way of turning well-crafted plans upside-down. Let it go unchecked, and your project is bound to suffer. See how to monitor—and control—scope creep so you can keep your projects on the right track.
In this class, you’ll learn how to:
- Use key project documents to manage scope creep
- Make change control an integral part of your process
- Resolve scope conflicts without sacrificing project quality
Downloadable Material
Change Request Template (1)
Winning Trust with Communication -
Class Description
Communication can make or break project success. So how do you do it well? Discover simple keys to becoming a better communicator and how to identify—and work with—your team’s different communication styles.
In this class, you’ll learn how to:
Build a solid foundation of trust among your team
Understand and adapt to different communication styles
Apply simple communication tactics to your project work to keep expectations clear and collaboration flowing
Downloadable Material
Communication Types
Communication Plan Examples
Communication Plan Template
Class Description
Good staffing plans start with treating your team like humans, not resources—and people have lives outside of work. See how to ensure project work gets delivered on time while creating space for your team to rest and recharge.
In this class, you’ll learn how to:
Assemble the right team for the project
Use hourly estimation to align estimates with your project plan
Manage workloads to keep your team busy but not overworked
Resolve common resourcing challenges
Downloads
Homework - Workload Planning In Team Gantt
How to get the most out of meetings - Adriana Girdler
Class Description
Ever feel like meetings get in the way of productivity? They don’t have to. Discover time-saving ways to structure and conduct project meetings that generate new ideas, build strong strategies, and deliver solid decisions.
In this class, you’ll learn how to:
Determine if you actually even need a meeting
Write clear and collaborative meeting agendas
Define meeting roles and rules
Use facilitation techniques to resolve conflict and keep meetings on track
Downloads
How to Take Great Meeting Notes
Meeting Agenda Template and Example
Meeting Facilitation Techniques
Mastering time management - Adriana Girdler
Class Description
Your team’s productivity starts with you. Model positive, productive behavior, and your team will follow. Discover work-smart strategies that can help you and your team stay heads-down without losing sight of project goals.
In this class, you’ll learn how to:
Keep information flowing with minimal disruption
Eliminate confusion around project work
Empower your team to protect focus time
Motivate your team and encourage healthy collaboration
Downloads
Defeat Busy and Master Time Management
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