A project team consists of individuals who support the project manager in performing the work of the project to achieve its objectives. Members of the project team include the project manager, the project management team, the project staff, and all stakeholders indirectly associated with providing support. This includes operational as well as functional managers, customers, end-user, vendors as well as suppliers. These people are either actively involved in the project or whose interest may be either positively or negatively impacted by the project. They are called stakeholders.

To build a team, a project manager seeks people from different backgrounds and experiences. This ensures diversity exists. However, care should be taken to create an environment of mutual trust and respect among all team members to achieve project objectives. This is done by improving knowledge, skill and trust among team members as well as empowering them to participate collaboratively in resolving issues.

This requires, especially for agile teams, the development of generalist specialists who have core competencies as well as general skills that can be leveraged to support others. In agile teams, team members need to engage in the process of self-organization as opposed to traditional projects where command and control systems are used.

Team skills assessments enable the team to holistically identify its strengths and weaknesses. The assessments may include areas such as team preferences, aspirations as well as decision making processes. To continually assess and refresh team skills, mechanisms for analyzing skills gaps need to be developed.

To ensure that the right team members are selected, pre-assignment tools such as attitudinal surveys, structured interviews as well as ability tests may be performed. The assignment of resources is established using a resource assignment document that clarifies which team member is assigned to what task during a project. To clarify and communicate responsibilities as well as accountabilities within a team, a RACI chart is set up, which guides decision making as well as coordination between team members. Such a chart enables the depiction of people who are responsible, accountable, consulted as well as informed when undertaking different activities within a project.

In addition, an environment to facilitate knowledge transfer among team members has to be established and maintained. This enables the facilitation of collaboration as well as promotion of visibility among the team.

For agile-based teams, visibility is promoted through charts or boards containing information that radiates continuously. Such boards are called information radiators. Examples of information radiators include scrum boards, sprint planning boards, charts that depict sprint velocity.

For more insight on how to effectively build a team, join the next Project Management class and learn to be a “Project Management Professional” with PMP Malaysia!