Selecting a Project Team

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Selecting a Project Team

• Süleyman PETEK

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A little about me
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Intro

• The selection occurs early in the life cycle of a
  software development project.
• Individual personalities affect the ability of a
  team to create positive synergy.
• A team personality is complete with spoken and
  unspoken rules and constantly shifting
  relationships.

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Team members

• Team members may be added or deleted as the
  project leader discovers conflicts, but such
  changes come with a price

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Where We Are in the Product Development Life
Cycle
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Relations to other issues

• Product Development Techniques
• Project Management Skills
• People Management Skills

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Selecting a Project Team

• Public
• Client and employer
• Product
• Judgment
• Management
• Profession
• Colleagues
• Self

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The leader

• A leader must understand at least one model of
  determining individual and team personalities
  thoroughly to be able to assess the health of
  relationships on project teams.
• Understanding several models gives the leader
  even more insight.

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Do you agree IBM ?

• Most software projects are so complex that no
  single individual can accomplish the goal
  project teams are required to meet the
  technological challenges.

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P-CMM

• The P-CMM is designed to allow software
  organizations to integrate workforce improvement
  with software process improvement programs guided
  by the SW-CMM.

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Bill Curtis and his friends say

• the largest variable in the success of a project
  is the skill of the people on the project team

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The Whole Is the Sum of the Parts

• The project leader must gain skill in handling
  people, seeing their holographic facets, and
  recognizing their healthy and unhealthy behavior
  patterns, not merely employing the processes and
  tools of the methodology.

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The Whole Is the Sum of the Parts

• Many project managers achieve their rank by
  having been technical experts in a given domain.
• A key skill, often unnatural among technical
  leaders, is the ability to recognize the mix of
  personalities that a project team possesses and
  maximize that mix for productivity.
• Management theory contains several personality
  models that explain how the team's collective
  unconstructive traits may be controlled.

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Individual Personality Type

• There are more than 150 models published
• A) Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
• B) FIRO-B Instrument
• C) Keirsey Temperament Sorter
• D) Kahler Process Communication Model
• etc.

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Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

• may be the most popular and widespread
• having been in use for more than 40 years
• its validity is continually updated and debated

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FIRO-B Instrument

• Namely Fundamental Interpersonal Relations
  Orientation-Measuring Behavior
• a multiple-choice questionnaire developed by
  William C. Schutz
• It is an efficient measure of interpersonal
  relationships

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Keirsey Temperament Sorter

• Closely related to MBTI is the Keirsey
  Temperament Sorter, derived from the work of
  David Keirsey in his book Please Understand Me.
• does not require professional administration, and
  offers the personality test instrument in four
  languages (Spanish, Portuguese, German, and
  Norwegian)

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Kahler Process Communication Model

• The Kahler Process Communication Model (PCM) is a
  six-part description based on transactional
  analysis, which analyzes personalities by
  observing how one conducts transactions with
  others (their "miniscripts").

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Enneagram

• centuries-old nine-part model with roots in the
  Middle East, measures nine basic defensive styles
  and gives breakthrough feedback and strategies
  for managing individual stress.

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Cultural Influences

• The cultural diversity of many modern companies
  is well known, and global project teams are
  becoming more common.
• Cultural patterns vary by country and region, and
  affect team members' expectations.

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Personal Motivation
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A large number of projects fail because the team
never "jells."
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Hire for Trait and Train for Skill

• Whenever possible, select team members for their
  compatible and complementary personality traits
  rather than their demonstrated skill in a
  particular area.
• A leader's ability to quickly assess a person's
  personality characteristics will go well beyond
  the one-sided balance sheet of accomplishments
  called a resumé. In fact, resumés can be terribly
  misleading.

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McFletcher WorkStyle Patterns Inventory

• The purpose of the assessment is to identify how
  a person prefers to approach work versus the
  approach that the position or current assignment
  requires, and it may be administered by a
  facilitator certified by McFletcher.

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Understand Group Dynamics

• A leader must recognize how teams form to be able
  to lead them properly

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Five Stage Model

• A leader must recognize how teams form to be able
  to lead them properly. A well-known model of team
  formation is the five-stage model
• 1) Forming
• 2)Storming
• 3)Norming
• 4)Performing
• 5) Adjourning

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Every team experiences this cycle and often
repeats it many times during the course of a
project

• Each time a new member joins the team or an old
  member departs, the team norms must be
  recalibrated for the new team situation.

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Recognize Teamicide

• Teamicide is the result of group dynamics in the
  organizational environment that become stuck in
  the storming stage, causing the members to
  retreat into the roots of their personalities,
  often destructively.

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Recognize Teamicide

• A technical project leader should look for signs
  that any of these are occurring and take action
  to correct them immediately. DeMarco and Lister
  give us some hints
• Defensive management
• Bureaucracy
• Physical separation
• Fragmentation of time
• Quality reduction of the product
• Phony deadlines
• Clique control

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Communication and Team Size

• Many of the causes of teamicide are under the
  control of a project leader. Team size in
  relation to the project size, if inappropriate
  for the task, may contribute to teamicide.
• Communication among the team members is
  fundamental to the accomplishment of the
  project's tasks.
• To prevent teamicide, everyone, managers and team
  members alike, must attempt to use the preferred
  channel of communication to transmit information
  so that the receiver can truly hear the message.

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Communication and Team Size
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Functional Responsibility Matrix
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Team Dispersion

• Geography Issues
• Time Considerations

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When to Lead and When to Manage

• This chapter is about leadership of project
  teams, but much of it concerns management. What's
  the difference between leadership and management?
  

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Leadership vs. Management
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Management

• Management is about following policies and
  procedures, and doing things right as an agent of
  the project and organization. It is about
  execution and compliance. It is getting the
  project team to perform at its best to pursue the
  project's goal. Management is about following
  processes. Following the P-CMM is a management
  activity.

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Leadership

• Leadership is about conjuring up and following a
  vision, and communicating that vision to the
  project team. Leadership is about figuring out
  the right things to do and building a fire in the
  followers to do them. It is about passion and
  pursuing the leader's goal. Leadership is about
  setting direction. Creating the team charter and
  communicating it to the team are leadership
  activities. It is best if the leader's goals and
  the project's goals are the same.

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Conclusion

• We have looked at some basic elements of project
  team leadership, such as personality, culture,
  and motivation, and explored them as they apply
  to the group dynamics of project management.

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Questions