Anyone who carries out routine work in a traditional organizational structure, e.g. paying salaries in a large company or manufacturing screws in a factory, can in principle work with more or less the same colleagues from training to retirement. During the process, you get to know them well, both the good and the less desirable sides and characteristics. Over the years, an order and team structure is established in the department and you learn how to deal with other colleagues individually.
Project management methodologies, technology and demands are constantly changing. You can be an expert one day and feel overwhelmed the next. That’s why it’s important to keep yourself informed and stay on the leading edge of project management knowledge.
Amongst everything else, the human factor here is very important to be considered. The psychological aspects of the individuals, both the project manager and the team members, can well be the decisive factor for a project to be a success or a failure. Their perceptions, emotions, problem-solving skills, decision-making processes among others can have an astronomical impact on the way project is being handled and executed.
Key competencies in project management
Project management methodologies constitute technical and procedural factors like scoping, scheduling, budgeting, quality assurance, risk, communications and procurement. And, they all very well established frameworks. But, it’s the people who act as the core of project management.
Creating and managing the psychological contract between leadership and team is also a must. Project managers need a set of skills to perform at his or her best.
They are:
Technical competencies
Behavioural competencies
Contextual competencies
All the skills needed by the project manager related to project life cycle (initiate, plan, execute control, close) comes under technical competencies. The personal competence elements of project managers like attitude, abilities and behavior come under behavioral competencies that help in dealing with different team-related challenges during the project lifecycle. Aligning project management with the organizational aspects of the company falls into contextual competencies.
A successful project manager is expected to be able to deal with all these aspects of human behaviour, to take them into account in his or her project management and steer accordingly. Hence, a project manager must not only be well versed in project management methods, economic issues, economic goals and project organisation, but also in psychological aspects of human co-operation within the project environment.
Figure 1: Four box model with Kolb's Learning Styles: Accommodating, Diverging, Converging, Assimilating
Learning Styles in Project Teams
In projects, basically new and temporary tasks are mastered. Of course, if you are doing something for the first (and only) time, you cannot know in advance how to do it. This, of course, means that you have to teach yourself first (or along the way) how to perform the tasks. Therefore, there are great similarities between how to teach new skills or knowledge and how to approach a project task. For this reason, it is important for the project manager to know and understand how learning processes work and what different learning styles there are, as these can give hints and explanations for the behaviours in the project group. Some people approach new tasks by reflecting and observing, others prefer an active experimental approach.
To describe the learning style Kolb uses two variables. The first variable deals with processes, for example, how we approach a new task. The two endpoints of this variable are 'active experimentation' and 'reflective observation'. The second variable deals with what we think about a new task and how we feel when we carry it out. The two endpoints here are 'concrete experience' and 'abstract concepts'. In Kolb's model it is assumed that we cannot deal with the two opposing terms at the same time, rather we must decide on one of the endpoints for each variable. Therefore, a matrix with four fields, each representing a learning style, is created from these two variables.
The first learning style is that of the discoverer (also called diverger). These people can look at new tasks from several different perspectives. They prefer to watch rather than try something out in practice. The second learning style is that of the thinker (also called assimilator). These individuals prefer a logical approach and prefer learning with ideas and theoretical concepts to interaction with people and teams. The third learning style is that of the decision maker (also called converger). These people tend to want to solve problems practically. They are more interested in technical specifications and functions than in people and groups. The fourth style of learning is that of the doer (also known as the accommodator). These people learn by putting different approaches directly into practice and trying them out, rather than thinking about the ideas and solutions in depth.
If you know the learning style of a project member, you will be able to better classify his or her behaviour when dealing with new, previously unknown tasks. In addition, the project manager can better support this person, as he can pass on new information and new knowledge in a way that best suits the learning style of the individual. Interesting in this context is that, some learning styles work better than other during different stages of the project life cycle. Imagination works brilliantly when working on the project scope, reflecting works well during planning and the hands-on-mentality is good for the project execution. A project manager aware of such phenomena can help the project team emphasise a helpful behaviour.
5 client management skills that every project manager needs
Consider the following pointers to get the highest level of productivity out of your team members in addition to making sure of their mental and physical well-being:
As a project manager, eliminate the usage of the term ‘resources’
Calling team members as ‘resources’ is the worst you can do as project managers. Because it’s not about using people to just get things done. It’s more about asking them to solve problems that are presented in your projects.
As a team member, choose product thinking over project thinking
One of the toughest challenges that project managers (or organisations for that matter) face is to try and elevate thinking and culture from a project level to product level. The focus of project thinking is delivery. This could be specific features of a web application or revamp of an entire website. In contrast, product thinking enables you to focus on outcome rather than on output.
Instead of focusing on timelines and dates, there is an emphasis on the goal you want to achieve or the job to be done. So, it becomes much more difficult to put time constraints around the delivery, at least up front. Regardless of how we try and get there, we ensure that we get to the outcome more efficiently.
Make sure that the team is not overbooked and prevent developer burnout
Keeping your team members busy and working on tasks is a tricky thing. You need to create a balance in the amount of work that is being undertaken by your team members. This will enable you to confidently commit to deadlines on projects knowing that your team is actually available to do the related work.
Communicate about staffing as much as you can. In an organisation that is continuously handling change, you will know that it’s a tough target to hit. Nevertheless, make sure to stay ahead of the resource crunch. Your team will be appreciative of your efforts in protecting their work-life balance and work-life harmony.
Connect with your team
Matching skills to your projects is a whole new task in itself. Connecting with your team and understanding what motivates them is crucial. Find out what your team members’ interests are. Get to know each and every team member’s work. With changing project schedules, plan how you will fill someone’s time with other work. Asking people to plan holidays and vacations in advance would help you plan ahead. Humans are hale and hearty one day and bedridden the next. So, you have got to be ready with a back-up plan.
Consider the stakeholders as decision-makers
It’s of utmost importance to understand that no one gets trained formally or is taught at some place to be a good client, stakeholder or project sponsor. But it’s not like they don’t know how to. They do know the fact that they have to be polite and nice to a project manager. It doesn’t have to be drilled into their heads by some means. What matters the most is that they are also, at the end of the day, humans and show their emotions while working on several projects with several people at one time. Life as a client can be difficult. As a project manager, you have to help them plan their time appropriately and communicate properly.
Conclusion
Technology will always keep evolving and change the methods by which projects are completed. Projects themselves will keep changing in nature and scope. What doesn’t change? Human factor. Ethical behaviour, consideration of others, principles of communication and a quest for knowledge and excellence are some of the examples of those invariable elements. It’s important to learn and practice ways of optimising human interaction, to build trust and confidence and to efficaciously interact with team members, internal and external stakeholders, individual in positions of authority. All these considerations will ultimately pave the way for efficient project management.
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