If you're just joining us, you can start this thread by going to the first in our series at: http://projectmilestone.com/cms2/index.php/project-management-blog/32-the-blues-plog/102-9-project-management-knowledge-areas?start=2

Welcome back.
It's November, Halloween has just passed and we're talking about Christmas and maybe even the new year. In all the hustle of planning for upcoming big dates in our calenders we realize that there's only so much of yourself to go around. Thankfully, there are others who can help out, if it's your spouse, your parents, in laws, uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews. Maybe you're hosting the big family Christmas party at your house this year, or you're putting that awesome photo album together from all the photo archives from family members. Or if you're really lucky, maybe you're organizing a family reunion/retreat for the holiday season somewhere down south. What ever the occasion, I think you're well aware of the amount of planning that is ahead of you. In particular coordinating the many people, their various skill sets, availability and passion or lack thereof.

In this installment of the nine project management knowledge areas, I look at no.7, human resource management. While many may not put this topic up in their top of the list of most sexy things to do in managing your project, it is none the less, every bit as important as something like creating a technical spec document. Come to think about it, I'm not sure if there's actually anything 'sexy' in project management period. Fun and exciting at times? Absolutely. Sexy? Perhaps not. But I digress. 

So what does Human Resource Management mean? It kind of sounds like some illegal human trafficking underground ring. While I would say, that some companies that I've seen, actually operate not too far from that exact scenario, it isn't very advisable. But more on that rant later. What I do want to touch upon are some of the more fundamental aspects of people management. Let's take a look at some of them below.

I won't go into great detail for each one of the points above, as it would take too long. However, there is plenty of opportunity to soak yourself in it entirely in a class room setting by going to our course schedule for your most convenient time and location. Neither will I look at some of the more "HR" functions that I'd like to leave to the HR specialists, such as 'resource deployment management', 'skills evaluation' and the like. I trust these functions will be done by their respective groups. I'm going to assume that a team has at this point already been assigned to you, the PM.

1. Project Management Phases.
In the four phases of project management, initiate, plan, execute and close, we know from experience that the greatest amount of resource requirements will occur during the execution phase of the project.This is important to know, if nothing more than to atleast know when to expect to have greater resources made available to you and your project. If your RDM (resource deployment manager, who may be your PMO director/manager or an entirely separate group) has done his job effectively, then you will have the near perfect team at your disposal when and where you need them.

Your Business Analyst, up at the front gathering relevant info client business system requirements, your infrastructure guru, putting the nuts and bolts together on the rack so you have a web server, database and indexing server ready to start building and testing code. Your Quality Assurance expert has generated his scripts and regression test base lines. Your developer quitely building away, machine humming from the stream of code that is pouring out of his head. All is right with your world and everything is going smooth... in another parallel universe perhaps. The real world seems to just not operate like this. But let's say, for argument sake, that you do have 'a' team ready and able at your disposal. Now what?

2. Setting up your project team.
You've got Joe, Mary, Indira, Chen and Vladamir at your first official team meeting. Great! You launch into how you run a tight ship. That people are expected at all meetings, arriving 5 minutes early, no pagers, berries and interruptions. You follow that amazing intro with your expectations from the team with respect to how many hours min. per day are required on actual project related activities, all the documents that are mandatory reading, all the meetings that are mandatory. The launch date that can't be missed otherwise there will be hell to pay. Wow, you've really won them over. You've single handedly redefined the meaning of rapport. Boy, am I cynical today. Ok, so there's a right way and a wrong way. I won't go into all the points here. But I will stress, one thing and that is team building.

3. Team Building
Team building is the act of doing the things that will promote a healthy relationship between team members that will hopefully unbottleneck (since there could be residual after effects from previous engagements) old road ways and pave new ones. There are many ways of achieving this. I'll let you find the most suitable one for your team. My personal approach has always be focus on individual growth in the greater context of the companies direction and vision. When you've successfully promoted team building (and it's really an ongoing process) hopefully your team will be able to better work together, increasing the level of efficient communications and team work.

To be continued in our next PLOG.

Publish date: Monday, November 30, 2009