Lesson 4 Introduction

Best practices promoted by the Project Management Institute (PMI) and other professional organizations provides a context for project planning and management. One of the the Knowledge Areas described in the PMI PMBOK is Human Resource Management. Many project managers believe that assembling project teams, delegating work to team members, keeping team members and stakeholders engaged, and other human resource issues are the most critical concerns in planning and managing project work. Effective application of best practices in human resource management drives productivity and ensures that work will be completed according to the project schedule, costs, and deliverable requirements. Human resources management takes into account personnel policies and regulations along with less tangible aspects of communications and team member motivation. Although the human factor is not readily quantified, we can still take steps towards increasing our understanding of how different sorts of people tend to work together and communicate with each other within the context of an organization--with the overall objective of optimizing productivity and delivering project results according to the plan. That's what this lesson is about.

Regardless of how the scope of a project is defined, it takes people to do the work. In this lesson, we will discuss how to use manpower most efficiently and how to use people most effectively.

Learning Objectives

By the end of Lesson 4, you should be able to:

• understand human resource issues associated with personnel assignment, loading and leveling;
• create and use appropriate human resource tools, such as project organizational charts and resource/responsibility matrices;
• understand how client and contractor team members work together to complete project deliverables
• grasp the importance of individual motivation, skills, and personality types in assembling and managing project teams; and
• describe communication planning, and the best use of communication skills, tools, and technology.

Readings, written assignments, and quizzes required for this lesson are summarized on the Lesson 4 checklist page.

Questions?

If you have any questions or would like to brainstorm ideas, please contact the instructor by phone or email. Also feel free to communicate with your fellow students via the Discussion Forum or email.

Lesson 4 Checklist

Lesson 4 is one week in length. (See the Calendar for specific due dates.) To finish this lesson, you must complete the activities listed below. You may find it useful to print this page out first so that you can follow along with the directions.

Efficient Use of Personnel in a Project

The most interesting, unpredictable, and expensive resource you are likely to work with as a project manager is people. Individuals and their interactions can greatly influence either the success or failure of any project. So, how do you manage them? We will begin by discussing how to develop a human resource plan for a project, and then we will discuss how personnel and interpersonal relationships in an organizational setting can be better understood. A first step would be to organize the individuals who will be working on a project.

A project organizational chart is similar to an organizational chart we discussed in Lesson 2. This document should clearly lay out who reports to whom, based on an individual's role and responsibility within the project. If you are managing the project, you will be at the top of the project organization chart, and ultimately responsible for the success of the project. For projects that involve outside contractors, client organizations normally require those contractors to prepare a project organization chart showing the roles of team members and relationship with client project personnel. Figure 4-1 shows a "standard" project organizational chart showing the main elements that are often included in GIS projects. The box in the middle is the project team, led by an assigned project manager. This structure shows the project's team position in the organization--inside the "program management unit" which may be a formal GIS Office. The project team uses and manages work and products provided by contractors and vendors and communicates with external organizations may have a role in the project (e.g., review and comment on project deliverables). The box in the upper right, "Project Management Office" is an organizational unit which some government and private sector organizations set-up to provide support and oversight in project planning and execution.

Figure 4-1: Model GIS Project Structure.
Click for text description of Figure 4-1: Model GIS Project Structure

This figure is an organizational chart with boxes and connecting lines showing the main parts of a model project management structure. This includes the "project team" or "work group" with oversight by an organizational unit, the relationship with users (or stakeholders) inside the organization, external entities that may have a role in the project. The project team or work group consists of an assigned project manager and team members which may come from any part of the organization. The project team reports to a specific "program unit" -- a Department or Division assigned responsibility for project oversight. The project team coordinates and communicates with project stakeholders (internal Departments and users) who play a role in review of project deliverables. Typically, external entities with which the project team also communicates include vendors of IT products like software, other contracted companies, and external organizations that have an interest in the project. Key documents that enable or support the project include the project charter, business case, and project plan. The box in the upper right shows an optional project management office (PMO). Some government organizations and private companies have established PMOs to provide support and best practices in project planning and management.

From Croswell, The GIS Management Handbook, Figure 9-1.

Figure 4-2 is an example of a project team structure for a GIS project-in this case, a contracted company providing GIS consulting services for a City government.

Figure 4-2: Example of Project Team for GIS Project
Click for text description of figure 4-2: Example of Project Team for GIS Project

The figure is an actual example of a project organizational chart for a municipal GIS project. A box at the top shows the senior management sponsor overseeing the project which connects to a box below representing the City Project Manager in the GIS Office which is the organizational "program unit" responsible for directing the project. Much of the work for this project is being carried out by a consultant team hired by the City. Below the City Project Manager box, there are boxes that show the consultant project manager and individual boxes for consultant team members. The box to the right, which connects to the City Project Manager box and the Consultant Project Manager box, shows the main project stakeholders and participants including staff of the Water and Waste Department, other City Departments, and external groups--including private engineering companies.

For better or worse, there are generally important inherent differences between the means of influencing employees as a project manager and as an organization manager. You may have limited or no influence over professional incentives for members of your project, such as salary or promotions. Even more challenging, you may not have the final say over time commitments of workers to the project. This underscores the importance of a project charter, where such issues should be clearly laid out for and signed off on by management and sponsors in the organization.

Beginning with a role and responsibility matrix (also called a "resource matrix") and a project organization chart, you can move towards ever more detailed personnel assignments regarding who will accomplish what tasks and when. A project plan generally contains this information in a Work Breakdown Structure, which we will discuss in Lesson 5. In assigning personnel, you may not always have people with the talents or skills you desire within your organization. Training, education, or professional development of existing personnel is one way to overcome this shortfall. Other times, you may need to hire qualified personnel on a temporary or permanent basis. If hiring is required, you will need to clearly outline education, skills, and experience that matches the roles and responsibilities the employee will inherit in the organization.

Many public sector organizations and private companies have established formal GIS position descriptions. Common job titles include "GIS Manager", "Geographic Information Officer (GIO), "GIS Analyst", "Senior GIS Analyst", "GIS Developer/Programmer" , "GIS Technician", "GIS Specialist", "GIS Database Administrator", and "GIS Systems Administrator". Croswell Appendix I has some examples of GIS positions and the Urban and Regional and Information Systems Association (URISA) has two publications giving detailed information about GIS positions and salaries including: the 2017 URISA GIS Salary Survey [2] and the Model GIS Job Descriptions, 2nd Edition [3]. Also, a Web search using some terms as "GIS position description" will turn up examples used in specific organizations.

Croswell, subsections 4.1 and 9.1 provide a thorough summary of considerations and approaches for staff GIS programs and projects and the organization of team members in projects.

Once tasks and their timing have been detailed, it is possible to optimize human resources using the tools of resource loading and resource leveling. Resource loading refers to how much of individuals' time is committed to projects during various periods. Optimally, every employee of an organization would have 100% of his or her time allocated during all working hours. In reality, it is very easy for employees to be over-allocated. In many organizations, it can be detrimental in many other ways for employees to be under-allocated, especially if it has an undesired effect on their hours worked and resulting paycheck.

A strategy to optimize personnel allocation is Resource leveling, which resolves conflicts with resources by changing the scheduled times. By having personnel perform tasks on later or earlier dates, managers can take steps toward leveling all personnel at 100% allocation. It should be noted, however, that tasks within a project are often dependent on one another and cannot always be moved arbitrarily without adversely influencing the project schedule. We will discuss this in greater detail in Lesson 5 when we talk about network diagrams and critical paths. Figure 4-3, below, shows an example of the benefits of resource leveling.

In our discussion of resource leveling, we will assume that the rectangles representing worker-days (or worker-weeks, worker-hours, etc) are able to be modifiable in dimensions as long as the area of the resulting worker-week rectangle stays the same. For example, if a task requires 8 worker-weeks to complete, this could be accomplished by one qualified person working on this for 8 weeks, 8 qualified people working on the same task for one concurrent week, or any other combination whose sum is 8 (e.g. 2 workers for 4 weeks, 4 workers for 2 weeks). Although this makes assumptions about how the task can be accomplished, it also provides the project manager with flexibility and potential efficiency when it comes to leveling resources.

Figure 4-3: Resource Leveling Example
Click for text description of Figure 4-3: Resource Leveling Example

This figure explains the concepts of resource usage and resource leveling addressing the way in which project team members (workers) are assigned to project tasks. The top part of the diagram shows worker days associated with 3 hypothetical project activities (A, B, and C) with the assumption that Activity A has 3 days of slack, Activity B has 2 days of slack, and Activity C has 2 days of slack. The bottom part of the diagram includes two graphs each with the X-axis is elapsed days for the project activities (duration), and the Y-axis is number of workers. The graph to the left represents resource (worker) usage if all activities start on Day 1. In this case, Activity A is completed at Day 2, Activity B is completed in Day 5, and Activity C completes at Day 3. The graph on the right shows resource usage if Activity C is delayed 2 days. In this case, Activity A is completed at Day 2, Activity B is completed in Day 5, and Activity C completes at Day 5.

Schwalbe, Information Technology Project Management, 8th Edition. Used with permission by Cengage Learning

Team Dynamics and Managing Teams

Just because a project manager has used all of the tools above to manage human resources in the most efficient manner possible is no guarantee that the project team will be effective. To be effective, a manager should understand how a team works together, what motivates people, and how to best use his or her influence and authority.

Much has been made of teamwork and building effective teams. Synergy is a popular concept; it means that the efforts of the team are superior to the sum of what all of the individual efforts would have been. Achieving such a lofty goal is only possible if project team members have a good understanding of themselves, their teammates, and the methods by which they tend to work together.

Team-building activities can be physical in nature and may only be possible to achieve when multiple members of a team work together to achieve a goal, underscoring the very definition of synergy. Unfortunately, we won't be able to build teams this way in this class. What we will be able to do is to attempt to increase our understanding of ourselves and other members of the class.

Tests to gauge personality types and employee motivational factors are sometimes used to help understand work styles, motivational factors, personality characteristics that impact project team member interactions provide a basis for assignment of project roles and task assignments. Two of the most popular of these are the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Social Styles Profile. Meyers-Briggs includes four dimensions of personality, meaning that everyone falls somewhere between the two logical ends of each dimension. The first dimension indicates where people fall on the scale between introverts or extroverts. The second dimension ranges from sensation to intuition, reflecting the way one takes in and process information. The third dimension goes from thinking to feeling, and measures how objectively or subjectively a person tends to judge people or things. The final dimension moves from judgment to perception, and is meant to reflect attitudes towards structures and plans."

The Social Styles Profile defines four zones, with the assumption that most people operate primarily in one of these zones. The zones are based on assertiveness and responsiveness. In this scheme, people are drivers (proactive and task-oriented), expressives (proactive and people-oriented), analyticals (reactive and task-oriented), or amiables (reactive and people-oriented). A GIS project manager may be a driver, but should appreciate and be able to work effectively with the team's analytical GIS Analyst, amiable GIS Technician, and expressive end user. Figure 4-4 below, diagrams how these social styles can be mapped.

Figure 4-4: Social Style Profile
Click for text description of Figure 4-4: Social Style Profile

This figure explains the concept of a person's social profile. It has two gold double-arrow lines that meet in the center and form 4 quadrants labeled Analytical (upper left), Driver (upper right), Amiable (lower left), and Expressive (lower right). The vertical arrow points to a label at the top called Task-Directed Responsiveness (referring to the top two quadrants). The vertical arrow points to a label at the bottom called People-Directed Responsiveness (referring to the bottom two quadrants). The horizontal arrow points to a label at the left called Ask-Directed Assertiveness (referring to the left two quadrants). The horizontal arrow points to a label at the right called Tell-Directed Responsiveness (referring to the right two quadrants).

Schwalbe, Information Technology Project Management, 8th Edition. Used with permission by Cengage Learning

Formal testing takes time and often money if an outside service is contracted to administer the tests and process the results. For this reason, it is not frequently used as part of project team member selection. But, in large projects, formal testing should be considered. It can help an organization assemble the right mix of people and provide insights to the project manager for work delegation and team management.

Another useful testing method, designed to gauge key factors that motivate people for certain types of job assignments, is the Kolbe A Index [4]. The Kolbe Corporation states that this test "measures the conative faculty of the mind -- the actions you take that result from your natural instincts, and is the foundational instrument used in Kolbe reports. It validates an individual's natural talents, the instinctive method of operation (M.O.) that enables you to be productive.

You may be wondering if there is a particular personality or motivational type that makes one best suited to be a project manager. The answer is an emphatic "NO". A successful project manager leverages his or her attributes and personal approach in project planning and execution. Project managers do need to be be organized, acquire management skills, and become familiar with methodologies that work in a range of project scenarios. A natural introvert may need to learn and apply some communication skills of an extrovert and the reverse is also true. But most of the key skills and methods of a successful project manager are learned--through appropriate training and application in real-world environments.

An important part of the project managers job is organizing the work for team members and ensuring that team members are maintaining a high level of productivity--always with a focus on the project objectives. As discussed in Croswell, subsections 4.1.7 and 4.1.8, effective team management has a lot to do with work delegation and maintaining team member morale. In summary, the following best practices make practical sense and should be applied in all GIS projects:

• Be open to communication from staff members. Take their concerns seriously, listen, and take appropriate action.
• Be clear in work assignments and provide the resources employees need to do their jobs.
• To the extent possible, make adjustments to the physical work environment (furniture, workstation location or layout, supplies) to increase efficiency or to simply address employees’ esthetic or personal needs.
• Be prompt and clear when conveying information. Even when it is necessary to explain bad news or changes, it is best to be upfront and present a constructive way to deal with it.
• Don’t micromanage. When employees have the necessary skills for a job, a manager should clearly define objectives, help in the planning and defining scope specifications, provide resources necessary for the work, put in place a sensible process for status review, and be available for support and clarification. But, assigned project team members should be encouraged to move ahead with the work without unnecessary oversight.
• Be fair and don’t show personal favoritism.
• Be sensitive to staff members’ personal situations and the “work-life balance” that might affect work. To the extent possible, provide support and be flexible when scheduling work and leave. Make use of the organization’s employee assistance programs if they are available.
• Establish realistic milestones with points for review of performance.
• Find ways to give regular feedback to employees and to offer performance incentives and rewards when performance justifies it.

Communications Planning

Communication planning is the first process in the effective communication within a team and between a team and other groups. Key to this process is understanding the communication needs of all stakeholders associated with the project.

A communication plan should include a method for creating, formatting, collecting, distributing, filing, and accessing information. This information may be official documents, or it may be a record of a telephone conversation between a client and the consultant. For formal communications, templates that explicitly organize data into a readily recognized format can be helpful. A memo style such as the ones you are using for peer reviews would be such an example. Users familiar with the format know where to look to find who the memo is to, from, its subject and memo details. Although most of this communication occurs during the project, input from stakeholders and analysis of this data during close-out can and often should be another key aspect which would be beneficial to the communication plan.

Informal communication during a project is also important to an effective team. Empathetic listening -- listening with the intent of understanding -- is a skill worth nurturing. It may seem efficient to listen to half a question, cut someone off short, and give a reply, but it is more effective to listen closely to the question, while trying to get at the underlying needs and expectations. Such empathetic listeners often rephrase and repeat the question before answering, prefacing the remark with a phrase like, "What I hear you saying is..." This makes the person aware that the other person is actively listening and allows clarification of the question and its underlying intent before an answer is given.

Tools for communication are numerous, and include letters, contracts, reports, meetings, interviews, surveys, telephones, faxes, pagers, email, text messaging, websites, message boards, weblogs (blogs), wikis, and web conferencing, to name just a few. Each of these communication tools has specific advantages and disadvantages. For example, message boards with threaded email discussions are a tool we have identified as useful for online learning. There may also be templates, best practices, methods as effective, and strategies for the use of all of these communication tools within an organization. Along with subject area knowledge, effective verbal and written communication skills are essential for project managers.

Read Schwalbe, Chapter 10, which explains communication styles and how they impact individual and group communication styles and the concept of communication channels--the number of people involved, the format for delivering messages, and how messages are sometimes misinterpreted.

In subsections 3.4 and 9.5, Croswell discusses concepts and best practices for project communications. He identifies the following types of communication that typically are needed for GIS projects and the specific communication methods and tools used:

• group facilitation, interviews, or brainstorm sessions requiring feedback and interchange with participants (e.g., GIS users);
• user surveys (information gathering to help define project requirements)--most effectively managed using a Web-based survey tool;
• written status reports (different formats and levels of detail) for project team members, broader group of stakeholders, and management;
• employment interviews with potential new team members;
• project team member performance evaluations;
• delegation of tasks to staff members;
• formal and informal dialog and briefings with senior management;
• presentations at a professional conference or seminar;
• contract negotiations and performance reviews with vendors and contractors; and
• technical training or system demonstrations.

All projects should include periodic written status reports--often monthly but sometimes more frequently depending on the type and timing of the project. The project manager is responsible for this reporting, but information from task leaders or others on the project team is obtained in status report preparation. Some projects may benefit from different types of written status reports--perhaps a detailed format aimed at project team members and other key participants, and a less detailed summary report targeting senior management. The status reports should use a standard format (document template or use of automated project management software). Figure 4-5 shows an example of a project status report template. This gives a summary of all project tasks (the body of the report) and, at the bottom, a summary of key accomplishments (for the reporting period), upcoming milestones, and a listing of project issues or problems to resolve.

Figure 4-5: Suggested Format for Project Status Report
Click for text description of Figure 4-5: Suggested Format for Project Status Report

This figure showing a recommended format for a Status Report is for a GIS Project containing text with status report information. At the top of the form is centered text that says STATUS REPORT on the first line with 2 lines below identifying the name of the GIS project and the report date. Below this title information are lines with key information about the status report including: Status Report Number, Submitted by (submitter's name), Submitted to (recipient’s name), Report Period (start and end dates for project activity presented in the report), and Report Submittal Date. The body of the form is the Status Summary which includes a summary of all project tasks. This portion of the report format has a line for each project task (task name and number) and columns (left to right). Plan Start Date, Plan Finish Date, Actual Start Date, Actual Finish Date, Percent Complete, and Comments. Following this task-by-task summary, the form has sections for reporting of summary information—lines to enter information on Major Activities/Accomplishments During Report Period, Upcoming Activities/Milestones, and Major Project Issues or Concerns to Resolve.

source:

One of the best skills that a project manager can develop and apply is meeting management, as underscored by Schwalbe (subsection 10.6) and Croswell (subsection 3.4.3). The importance of good meeting organization and management becomes obvious when you consider meeting costs. For instance, the cost of employee time, for a two-hour meeting with 8 people could easily be $1,000 or more--not including an accounting for employee travel time, direct costs (e.g., cost of meeting space), or possible contractor time. It is critically important to get the most out of meetings by applying sound meeting management methods which include:

• formulate and circulate a clearly written statement of the meeting’s objectives;
• select participants carefully to avoid inviting people who have little role or stake in the meeting topic;
• prepare an agenda and appropriate accompanying materials, and distribute these to invitees in advance of the meeting;
• be clear on meeting time and place, and keep to the scheduled start and end times. If practical, send a reminder to invitees;
• welcome participants, and begin with introductions (if necessary) and a restatement of the meeting objective and topics;
• provide effective meeting leadership and moderation, and use presentation materials if appropriate. Facilitate effectively, and encourage feedback and interchange (geared to the type of meeting and topic);
• take notes and record key conclusions and action items (or assign this role to a staff member);
• at the end of the meeting, summarize key points of the meeting, conclusions reached, and action items assigned;
• follow up (soon after the meeting) with a meeting summary and identification of action items (with those responsible and timing). This distribution can be a simple email message or a more formal meeting report. Track response to the action items and “nudge” those responsible as necessary.

Because meetings take time and, in many cases, meeting participants are based in different locations, use of remote, Web-based meeting and collaboration tools is appropriate. The COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020-21, has accelerated already existing trends for use of remote, electronic communication and meeting tools and methods--not to mention telework. It is likely that many such practices adopted  during the pandemic will become standard after the pandemic subsides. Tools and services such as Zoom, Goto Meeting, Webex, Google Docs, Adobe Connect, and others support voice and video connection as well as common views (and sometimes joint editing) of documents and other project materials.

Assignment 3 - Assemble Project Team

Overview

For Assignment 3, you are the project manager for the GIS contractor chosen to carry out the City of Metropolis Geodatabase Design and Development project. You will assemble a project team (the contractor's project team) for the City of Metropolis Geodatabase Development Project. You can assume that your company has already been selected by the City—that is, your company and other companies have submitted proposals in response to the City’s RFP and your proposal was determined to be the most responsive and was formally selected to do the work. Now you, as the contractor’s project manager, have been asked by the City’s project manager (Lucille Geodata) to present information about your project team—the people and their roles for the project.

Your Submittal for Assignment 3

Take a look at the City of Metropolis RFP [5]--particularly the summary of major work elements (subsection 1.2) and expectations on project team roles in 2.3.5. Use the material that you have reviewed in this lesson to identify team members with positions and skills needed to carry out the project work. Assume that necessary staff are already employees of your firm and are available for work on this project. Since you are taking the role of the contracted company, you should make up a company name and refer to this in your assignment. This assignment identifies and describes members of the contractor's team, NOT any of the City's project team members.

The content for this Assignment consists of a brief introductory explanation of the project. Provide enough information in this summary to give a reader, not already familiar with the project, an understanding of its background and context--including reference to the RFP as the basis for selection of the contractor. Then prepare a table that presents a summary of the contractor’s (your company’s) project team members (not the City’s project team). Content in this table should include:

• Name of the team member
• Project functional title (e.g., “Project Manager”, “Field Data Collector”)
• Hourly billable rate*
• Brief description of project role and duties: one paragraph describing each team member’s assigned work on the project.

*Select hourly billable rates to the best of your ability. In practice, billable rates, which cover all company employee compensation and overhead do vary by company, region of the country, and type of project.  Assume that the project manager rate will be in the range of $100 to $175 per hour and the field data collection personnel will be about $40 to $60 per hour. Rates for other project roles (e.g., database design, application development) will fall between these ranges.

There is no single ideal size for the project team. The number of people on the team and their mix of skills and roles needs to be adequate to carry out all work on the project in a reasonable period of time. As a general rule, it is best to keep the team as small as possible as long as it has enough people with management and technical roles to perform the work. For a project like this, a team size of about 6 to 10 people is appropriate.

Assignment 3 is due at the end of Lesson 4 (this lesson).

Refer to the grading rubric below for guidelines on expected content and format.

Submitting the Assignment

View specific directions for submitting Assignment 3.

Grading

This assignment is worth 40 points. The grading approach is explained in the table below.

 The instructor may deduct points if the Assignment is turned in late, unless a late submittal has been approved by the Instructor prior to the Assignment submittal date.