09. Project Human Resource Management

Relationship with the employees has always been an important aspect of the modern civilizations. In different from the last century where the most important goal in an organization was to make the most possible profit, nowadays everyone has understood the importance of good relationship among people and the goal beside the profit, is having satisfied employees and customers. Many corporate executives have said, “People are our most important asset”. People are the factor which determine the success and failure of organizations and projects. As a new field IT is seeing an increase on the demand of its workforce. People with IT skills nowadays are needed almost in every area. The Digital Planet 2006 study estimated that the global marketplace for information and communications technology (ICT) would top $3 trillion in 2006 and reach almost $4 trillion by 2009. I think we are going far from our goal of this paper, so let's turn on what is project human resource management? We will understand it as making the most effective use of the people involved with a project. Processes included in this knowledge area are:
1- Human resource planning.
2 - Acquiring the project team
3 - Developing the project team.
4 - Managing the project team.
For people to be productive, researches suggest that there are some theories to be followed like : motivation theories, influence and power and effectiveness. There exists two types of motivation :
a)Intrinsic motivation which causes people to participate in an activity for their own enjoyment, that is; when there is a job which attracts them and,
b)Extrinsic motivation causes people to do something for a reward or to avoid a penalty.
Different researches have been done in the human resource management area and many articles have been written. This table show examples of Herzberg’s Hygiene Factors and Motivators (to view larger picture click on it).
But is it enough to be polite and kind with employees? Important also is to have a influence in the project. As Thamhain and Wilemon’s Ways to Have Influence on Projects include the following actions and qualities:
1. Authority: ability and right to issue orders.
2. Assignment: ability to of project managers to influence a worker's later work assignments.
3. Budget: the project manager's perceived ability to authorize others' use of discretionary funds.
4. Promotion: the ability to improve a worker's position.
5. Money: the ability to increase a worker's pay and benefits.
. Penalty: the project manager's ability to cause punishment.
7. Work challenge: the ability to assign work that capitalizes on a worker's enjoyment of doing a particular task.
8. Expertise: the project manager's perceived special knowledge that others deem important.
9. Friendship: the ability to establish friendly personal relationships between the project manager and others.
The above should be considered but project managers should make sure not to rely heavily on authority, money and penalty because usually they cause projects to fail.
The first process, which is planning involves identifying and documenting project roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships. Outputs include of this process includes:Project organizational charts, Staffing management plan, Responsibility assignment matrixes and Resource histograms.
The second process, which is acquiring the project team means acquiring the right people for the right jobs. It’s important to assign the appropriate type and number of people to work on projects at the appropriate times
The third process; developing the project team comes after the project team has been acquired. The main goal of team development is to help people work together more effectively to improve project performance. If the team has problems inside, the project may fail therefore project managers must make sure that they have chosen the right people in the right positions.
And last step, managing the project team. In this case the responsibility falls under project managers, whose role is to lead their teams in performing various project activities. After assessing team performance and related information, the project manager must decide if changes should be requested to the project or if corrective or preventive actions should be recommended. To conclude this topic, some general advices on teams should be taken.
- Be patient and kind with your team!
- Fix the problem instead of blaming people!
- Establish regular, effective meetings!
- Allow time for teams to go through the basic team-building stages!
- Limit the size of work teams to three to seven members!