Project Teams and Stakeholders

Most large projects are managed by a cross-functional core team.  Core team members have a dual responsibility; they are responsible for the project achieving its goals and they are responsible to ensure that the project complies with their function’s standards and best practices.

Team Leaders adapt to the business and team environment to ensure the team creates the performance or implements the change for which it was chartered.

Agile Scrum projects rely on the leadership of the Scrum Master and Product Owner to assist the project team in accomplishing the project tasks. While neither of these individuals will be the project leader in a classic sense, both take on some of the typical responsibilities of project leadership that are necessary for effective project management.

The Agile culture is a set of characteristics found in all the Agile methodologies. These characteristics are empowerment, adaptation, and a focus on performance.

Project Team Building is a process that the Project Core Team normally goes through to improve team coordination and decision making.

When project team members are changed, the project leader needs to manage both the process of saying “Goodbye” to one individual and saying “Hello” to another.

The temporary and often virtual nature of projects leads to the creation of a project team who has never worked together. Effective use of project resources requires that the project resources are capable of performing the assigned tasks. A growing element of project planning is planning for project team training and in some cases team member skill training.

In the typical project of today, a project training plan is essential to address the challenges with project resources. At this time in the project, the impact of the training plan that was developed is assessed. In addition, changes to the project team will likely require modifications to the training approach.

Teams perform better when they have clear shared goals.  One key element of good team leadership is helping your team establish team goals. This module will provide several suggested approaches for establishing goals and a set of criteria for good team goals.

Project Decision Making is the process whereby the project leader and project team decide upon project strategy, tactics, and acceptable actions.

Team members will often need to negotiate with each other on tasks and activities and the team leader may need to negotiate with the other managers or supervisors of team members.

From time to time teams will experience conflict. When the team leader or team members are able to resolve the conflict in a positive manner, the team becomes stronger and performs better.

Understanding and leveraging diversity can improve project team performance in many situations. An interesting aspect of diversity on projects that it includes both cultural diversity and technical diversity. Both of these should be actively managed.

Projects are unique and project team members are frequently changing. Project mentoring - which focuses on coaching and aligning project team members and stakeholders - is frequently required. In this case, it is less about long-term career mentoring and more about effective engagement with other project team members to ensure project objectives are met.

Emotional Intelligence is a framework for improving communication and team dynamics. These principles can be used by a project manager to understand how to harness their own emotions and the emotions of others to achieve project goals.

A project manager can use the principles of emotional intelligence to improve their active listening skills. In addition, the application of emotional intelligence to project team and stakeholder interactions can reduce conflict and improve alignment between individuals.

Project managers and core team leaders can use the framework of situational leadership to guide their interactions with team members. By assessing the readiness of team members, the project manager or core team leader can interact with a leadership style likely to improve team performance.

Project Communication Management is a very broad term that refers to all of the communication activities associated with the project. Communication is a key attribute of project management.

Teams rely on effective communication, yet there are many factors that can inhibit communication. When these factors are present, the team leader needs to proactively manage the team communication processes to overcome them.

Team Meetings are a gathering of team members to discuss aspects of the project. Team pulse meetings focus on status. Team problem-solving meetings focus on problem resolution.

During a Sprint, the Scrum Team meets daily at a Scrum Meeting to provide status on progress.

Project Management Reviews are the formal documented meetings held periodically between senior management and the project team. 

Project technical reviews are formal decision meetings between team members and a panel of subject matter experts.

Sprint Demonstration Planning ensures that the Sprint Demo meeting appropriately reflects the work accomplished by the Scrum Team.

Misunderstandings frequently occur within project teams. The project leader to demonstrate and encourage effective listening and clear communication to minimize these. This lesson illustrates several best practices for avoiding misunderstandings