Creating a High Performing Team

A Case Study for PMP® Certification Course

Table of contents
1. Introduction
2. Challenges
3. Solution
4. Approach
5. Final outcome
6. Critical success factor
7. Lessons learned
Introduction:

A global organization with their presence in a hundred countries across the globe
provides goods carrier services. It has taken up the project to establish an
Integrated Management System.

Since the project is done at the global level, it is required to have the team
members who are highly skilled and key for success of the project. The Project
Manager and the Global Human Resource Management Department, along with
the regional Human Resource Management Department had the tele-conference
and discussed the requirements related to the project team. This involved:
• Team members across various different countries
• Specialized skills and capabilities
• Availability of Human Resources locally within the region and globally
• The need of involvement and role of HR department in identifying the
Human Resources
• Required training and resources

This discussion has provided a good insight towards the requirements associated
with human resources. Various strategies were also considered for acquiring and
developing human resources.

Now the project manager is looking for identification and onboarding the required
human resources for the project.

Challenges

The organization with global presence, while working on its strategy, has identified
many challenges which are required to be addressed proactively. It is very crucial to
address all the challenges which are essential for the success of the project.

The typical challenges are:

• Identification of right set of talents who are fit for the project
• Developing the teams in a diverse environment
 • Enabling an effective communication management
• Bringing the shared understanding about the project to the team members
• Assembling and managing the project team

Besides this, addressing the identified challenges also provides the better
competitive edge to the project manager to deliver the output of the project in
time. An efficient team is key to success.

Solution

The creation of a high performing team is essential to ensure achievement of the

objectives of the project successfully. Firstly, it is required to create a project
organization structure with defined roles and responsibilities, involving Governance,
Management, and Project teams.

This would provide clear insights towards the required structure and at the same
time, it would provide the visibility towards the actions which are essential to build a
high performing team.

That involves:
• Building an effective and efficient team
• Defining and setting the ground rules
• Educating and negotiating the agreements among teams and team members
• Empowering the team members and stakeholders
• Training and developing the team members and stakeholders
• Defining virtual environment for engaging and supporting virtual teams
• Creating and building the shared understanding among the team members

Approach

The approach, considered for creating a high performing team, involves the focus
areas which are highlighted in the solution section. Each of these involves the
required deliverables and tools for ensuring the effectiveness and efficiency.
The various team members required for the project at each level, along with their
required skills and capabilities were identified. However, the success of the project
can be ensured by following the approach depicted in figure 1.1.

Build a Team

Build Shared
Define
Understandi
Ground
ng About
Rules
Project

Engage and
Negotiate
Support
Project
Virtual
Agreements
Teams

Empower
Train Team
Team
Members
Members
and
and
Stakeholders
Stakeholders

Figure 1.1: Creating High Performance Team: Area of Considerations

1. Build a Team

The typical considerations that are essential to look at while building the team are:
● Supporting the diversity and inclusion
● Appraising the skills of the team
● Determining the team members’ requirements
● Assessing and refreshing the team skills continuously
● Maintenance of team knowledge and
● Discussing the team’s responsibilities with the teams

This requires a good understanding of the deliverables, such as skills list, required
technology, resource schedule, rates, and resource assignment. Further considering
the varied culture and diversity a team composition has to be created so that one
can get the visibility towards how team members are brought together to engage
with each other with assigned roles and responsibilities. This further enables the
creation of a RACI chart, where RACI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted
and Informed. The below RACI Chart (refer Table 1.1) provides a sample depiction of
assignment of RACI to some roles.

Roles
Regional
Activities Global Project Team Team
Project
Manager Manager Member
Manager
Requirement
A R R R
Identification
Training
Team C A R R
Members
Deliver Work
I C A R
Package

The success of this involves project managers (global and regional) with various skills,
which include:
● Conflict Management
● Cultural Awareness
● Decision Making
● Facilitation
● Leadership
● Meeting Management
● Negotiation
● Networking

Further, the resource management plan has to be established, which defines how
the project resources are acquired, monitored, and controlled. This also needs the
consideration of virtual environment dynamics. Team appraisal is an essentially
important activity to ensure setting the right objectives and expectations for the
team.
2. Define Team Ground Rules

Since the team is spread across the globe with varied cultures and backgrounds,
there will be a complex environment and that needs to be addressed by defining
ground rules.

Ground rules ensure the team performs well and those have to be defined
collectively, based on the context of organization, its rules, and team dynamics.
Further the ground rules have to be communicated to the team members and the
compliance to the ground rules has to be ensured by managing and rectifying the
violation of the ground rules. This involves creation of Team Charter and Team
Norms.

The skills which are essential for establishing team ground rules are:
● Negotiation Skills
● Conflict Management
● Brainstorming
● Ethics

3. Negotiate Project Agreements

While looking at the team dynamics, it is essential to understand that the team
requires a certain amount of time to settle down. The process there needs an
understanding established among the teams and it has to be facilitated.

Discussions have to be facilitated to establish the agreement through effective

negotiation. This will help in establishing the mutual understanding and agreement
before establishing the formal contract with the third parties. It is essential to define
Service Level Agreement, Performance Report, Resource Calendar, and Go-Live
Blackouts.

This should include:

● Statement of work
● Schedule and milestone dates
 ● Performance reporting
● Inspection, quality, and acceptance criteria
● Terms and conditions including commercial (for external)
● Termination clauses
● Dispute resolution approaches
● Rewards or penalty

The skills required for establishing them effectively are Expert Judgement,
Negotiation Skills, and Lesson Learned.

4. Empower Team Members and Stakeholders

Team empowerment is an effective

way of enabling the teams to perform
well. This requires the project
manager to understand the pulse of
the team and engage with them
accordingly.

This requires identification of the

team's strength and set-up system
based on these so that the team is
able to perform well and deliver
results. This requires the following
considerations:

● Organizing teams based on the team’s strengths

● Establishing task accountability among the teams
● Evaluating the team’s performance of tasks’ accountability
● Enabling the team’s ability for making decisions

Effective decisions and estimates have to be made and that requires the usage of
tools like Time Decision Making, Fist of Five, Roman Voting, Polling, Planning Poker,
Dot Voting, and Retrospective.
5. Train Team Members and Stakeholders

Effectiveness of the team members requires adequate skills and capabilities along
with the established culture. Not every team member is able to perform at a certain
level and that requires continued evaluation and training.

A team with great skills and capability is able to perform and deliver the results. This
requires:
● Determining and establishing the capabilities, competencies, and training
elements
● Determining and analyzing the needs of training based on the project
requirement
● Identifying the different methods and models of training
● Ensuring the effectiveness of training with assigning teams for training and
evaluating the training performance

Besides, there should be:

● Plan for training and mentoring
● Commercials associated with training
● Assessment reports of training
● Training calendars and certifications

The tools which are essential for making the training initiative successful can be
training gap analysis, training, pairing, and mentoring.

6. Engage and Support Virtual Teams

The goods carrier company’s project, Integrated Management System, being global
managing, the team spread across 100 countries is a herculean task and needs a
mechanism to connect better.

Majorly, the teams are spread across and come from varied backgrounds and that
needs an effective engagement. There may be lingual, cultural, legal, political,
commercial, and environmental barriers. These need to be addressed effectively by:
● Identification and examination of virtual team needs
 ● Consideration of appropriate technology or platforms
● Establishing the common vocabulary following the best practices like PMP
● Evaluating the effectiveness of the solution implemented regularly

Here the role of technology, engagement process, and plans needs thorough analysis
and understanding so that the communication and collaboration are well
established. The various tools considered can be Communication, Communication
Plan, Variance Analysis, and PM Powers.

7. Build Shared Understanding About the Project

The success of an initiative is possible only when there is the common and shared
understanding among the involved stakeholders and team members. Everyone
reaches a common consensus and supports each other with the common objective
of the project's success.

The common tools to establish the consensus among the team members would
include:
● Project Charter
● Project Plan
● Kick-Off Meeting
● Brainstorming
● T-Shaped Skills

These need to be established. Besides, it is essential to establish Vision, XP Metaphor,

Product box exercise. These can be enabled by surveying all parties to reach
consensus and supporting the outcome of the party's agreement.

Final outcome

By ensuring the establishment of the high performing team, the project can be
taken forward with full confidence and results can be delivered.

In addition to that, a high performing team involves the team members with right
attitudes, which enable them to produce results as expected. They innovate and
contribute to the project proactively so that the defect or errors will be eliminated,
resulting in a good quality system (output).

As the team also engages with stakeholders whose contribution is required for the
success of the project, a high performing team enables the stakeholders to perform
well.

Critical success factor

The critical success factors for ensuring the high performing team in the global
environment are:
• Vision communicated to the team with shared understanding
• Setting up the ground rules and ensuring the adherence to the same
• Establishment of agreements and compliance to those
• Training teams to build the skills which enable the right fitment according to
the needs of the project
• Enabling and empowering the team
• Identifying and establishing the effective virtual teams, with clear
understanding of the global environment
• Continual evaluation and improvement throughout the project’s life

Lessons Learned

With the establishment of the high performing team for the project, various insights
which can be obtained shall be:
• Visibility towards the need of high performing team
• Ways to establish and organize to create a high performing team
• Effects for skill gaps, which do not fit to the project environment
• Consideration of virtual environments while establishing team’s engagement
• Team dynamics and ways to handle them