Solution Manual for Project Management The

Managerial Process 5th Edition by Larson

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Solution Manual for Project Management The Managerial Process 5th Edition by Larson

Chapter 11 - Managing Project Teams

Chapter 11

MANAGING PROJECT TEAMS

Chapter Outline

1. The Five-Stage Team Development Model

A. Forming
B. Storming
C. Norming
D. Performing
E. Adjourning
2. Situational Factors Affecting Team Development
3. Building High-Performance Project Teams
A. Recruiting Project Members
B. Conducting Project Meetings
i. The First Project Team Meeting
ii. Establishing Ground Rules
a. Planning decisions
b. Tracking decisions
c. Managing change decisions
d. Relationship decisions
iii. Managing Subsequent Project Meetings
C. Establishing a Team Identity
D. Creating a Shared Vision
E. Managing Project Reward Systems
F. Orchestrating the Decision-Making Process
i. Facilitating Group Decision Making
a. Problem identification
b. Generating alternatives
c. Reaching a decision

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Chapter 11 - Managing Project Teams

d. Follow-up
G. Managing Conflict within the Project
i. Encouraging Functional Conflict
ii. Managing Dysfunctional Conflict
H. Rejuvenating the Project Team
4. Managing Virtual Project Teams
5. Project Team Pitfalls
A. Groupthink
B. Bureaucratic Bypass Syndrome
C. Team Spirit Becomes Team Infatuation
D. Going Native
6. Summary
7. Key Terms
8. Review Questions
9. Exercises
10. Case: Kerzner Office Equipment
11. Case: Ajax Project
12. Case: Franklin Equipment, Ltd.

Chapter Objectives

• To identify key characteristics of a high-performance project team

• To appreciate the impact situational factors have on project team development
• To develop strategies for developing a high-performance project team
• To build skills that encourage functional conflict and discourage dysfunctional
conflict
• To understand the challenges of managing virtual project teams
• To recognize the importance of the project manager’s behavior in shaping how a team
performs.

Review Questions

1. What are the differences between the five-stage model of team development and
the punctuated equilibrium model?

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The five-stage model asserts that effective project groups evolve in a predictable
manner. They progress from forming, storming, norming to performing and conclude
by adjourning once the project is about to be completed. The punctuated equilibrium
model argues that groups do not naturally evolve into an effective team over time, but
encounter a mid-point crisis which forces members to elevate their performance and
establish new roles and norms for achieving project objectives. Within the context of
the five-stage model, the punctuated equilibrium model suggests that groups begin by
combining the forming and norming phases, then go through a period of relatively
low-performance, followed by storming, then a period of high-performance, and
finally adjourning.

2. What are the elements of an effective project vision? Why are they important?

There are four key elements to an effective vision. First, the vision must make
strategic sense. Second, one must be able to communicate it to others. Third, the
project leader must have a personal passion to achieve it. Finally, the vision should
inspire others to give optimal effort. The vision must make strategic sense; otherwise
others will not see it as appropriate or realistic. One must be able to communicate the
vision to others so that they understand it and choose to pursue it. The project
manager must have a passion to achieve the vision so that it is seen as being credible
and has the full support of the project manager. Finally, visions motivate superior
performance and therefore must be a source of inspiration to others.

3. Why should a project manager emphasize group rewards over individual

rewards?

Because most project work is a collaborative effort, it makes sense that the reward
system encourages teamwork. Recognizing individuals can distract from team unity.
Because project work is interdependent it can be very difficult to distinguish who
truly deserves individual credit. Group cohesion can be undermined if members feel
that others are receiving special treatment. Camaraderie can vanish, to be replaced by
bickering and obsessive preoccupation with internal group politics. Such distractions
can absorb a tremendous amount of energy that would otherwise be directed to
completing the project. Individual rewards should only be used when there is clear
agreement that a member deserves special recognition.

4. What is the difference between functional and dysfunctional conflict on a

project?

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It can be difficult to discern whether a conflict among project members is functional

or dysfunctional. The key is how conflict affects project performance, not how
individuals feel. Members can be upset and dissatisfied with each other, but as long
as the conflict enhances project performance then it is considered functional.
Conversely, if the conflict distracts from project performance by degenerating into
personality clashes or creating unnecessary delays in critical project work, then the
conflict is considered dysfunctional.

5. When would it be appropriate to hold a formal team-building session on a

project?

Formal team-building sessions should be used whenever it is believed that such

activities will enhance the performance of the project team. This would especially be
true at the beginning of a project when the session would help develop a team identity
among a group of strangers. Likewise, team-building activities could be used to
assimilate new project members once the project is underway. Devoting time and
attention to team-building would also be appropriate when the project team is
experiencing problems working together or needs to elevate its performance to meet
new project demands. The sessions would be useful in identifying and changing
dysfunctional behavior as well as re-energizing the team to higher levels of
performance. One mistake project managers make is that they resort to formal team-
building activities after they realize the team is in trouble. It might be wiser to utilize
team-building sessions earlier to encourage collaboration and to prevent small
problems from escalating into major problems within the team.

6. What are the unique challenges of managing a virtual project team?

There are many challenges associated with managing a spatially separated, virtual
team. Two of the biggest challenges are developing trust within the team and
effective communication patterns. People tend to find it difficult to trust someone
whom they have met one or two times or not at all. Furthermore, unlike when
members work side by side and can readily assess the competence and effort
displayed by fellow team members, the actions of distant members are not visible.
Finally, physical separation prohibits informal socializing that contributes to trust
among participants. Reliance on electronic, as opposed to direct communication, can
be problematic. Managers not only have to overcome time zone differences and
cross-cultural variations, but they are missing visual cues that contribute to effective
communication.

7. What can a project manager do to avoid some of the pitfalls of a highly cohesive
project team?

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First, project managers need to be aware that there is a potential downside to a highly
cohesive team and be able to recognize the symptoms associated with the pathologies
described in the chapter. Second, they can take preemptive action to reduce the
isolation of the team by encouraging the maintenance of ties with the rest of the
organization as well as with other project stakeholders. Third, they can personally
reinforce the connection between the project and the mission and policies of the
parent organization. They can also encourage functional conflict and discourage the
group from developing a “holier than thou” attitude. They can also use the nominal
group technique to encourage the surfacing of dissenting opinions. Finally, they can
hold formal team-building sessions to identify and eliminate dysfunctional norms and
refocus the team’s attention on project objectives.

Exercises

1. The following activities are based on a recently completed group project that you
have been involved in. This project may have been a student project, a work
project, or an extracurricular project.
a. Analyze the development of the team in terms of the five-phase model and
the punctuated equilibrium model. Which model does the best job of
describing how the team evolved?
b. Analyze the group in terms of the nine situational factors that influence team
development. What factors positively contributed to group performance?
What factors negatively contributed to group performance? How did the
group try to overcome the negative factors? What could you have done
differently to overcome these negative factors?
c. Analyze how effectively the group managed meetings. What did the group
do well? What didn’t the group do well? If the group were formed again,
what specific recommendations would you make about how the group should
manage meetings?

This exercise is designed to have students apply their own experience to chapter
material. We recommend that you use it as a written assignment. Responses will
vary depending upon the kind of project they choose to analyze (work, school, or
extracurricular). Some students will balk at the assignment claiming that they have
no project experience. Upon closer examination this is rarely the case. Most students
at a minimum have been involved in group assignments in this or other classes and
can use that experience to do the analysis.

Students should be encouraged to provide concrete examples to support their analysis

and recommendations.

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A variation which reduces the scope of the assignment is to assign only one of the
three sets of questions (a., b. or c.) or have the students choose the most appropriate
one, given the project they are analyzing. This exercise can also be used as a group
assignment if the focus is a project that the students are currently working on as part
of this class.

2. Assume that you have the following decision-making options: (1) make the
decision on your own with available information, (2) consult others before
making a decision, and (3) call a meeting and reach a consensus, seeking to
arrive at a final decision everyone can agree on. Which approach would you use
to make each of the following decisions and why?
a. You are the project leader for Casino Night on campus, a charitable event
organized by your group to raise money for the homeless. The event was a
big success, garnering a net profit of $3,500. Before the event your team
researched nearby organizations that support the homeless and to whom the
money could be given. You narrowed the choices to the “Chunk of Coal
House” and “St. Mary’s Soup Kitchen.” Eventually your group decided that
the funds be given to Chunk of Coal. You are about to write a check to its
director when you read in the local newspaper that the Chunk of Coal House
has terminated operations. What should you do with the money?
b. You are a golf course designer hired by Trysting Tree Golf Club to renovate
their golf course. You have worked closely with the board of directors of the
club to develop a new layout that is both challenging and aesthetically
pleasing. Everyone is excited about the changes. The project is nearly 75
percent complete when you encounter problems on the 13th hole. The 13th
hole at Trysting Tree is a 125-yard par three in which golfers have to hit
their tee shots over a lake to a modulated green. During the construction of
the new tee box, workers discovered that an underground spring runs
beneath the box to the lake. You inspected the site and agreed with the
construction supervisor that this could create serious problems, especially
during the rainy winter months. After surveying the area, you believe the
only viable option would be to extend the hole to 170 yards and create
elevated tees on the adjacent hillside.
c. You are the leader of a new product development project. Your team has
worked hard on developing a third-generation product that incorporates new
technology and meets customer demands. The project is roughly 50 percent
complete. You have just received a report from the marketing department
detailing a similar product that is about to be released by a competitor. The
product appears to utilize radical new design principles that expand the
functionality of the product. This poses a serious threat to the success of
your project. Top management is considering canceling your project and
starting over again. They want you to make a recommendation.

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This exercise is designed to have students choose a decision making method to fit the
situation. Students should first privately select what they consider the appropriate
decision-making method that should be used. The teacher can poll the class to find
out which approach they identified and debate differences in opinion.

Casino Night: make decision on your own. You have sufficient information and
anticipate no disagreement over the choice.

Trysting Tree Golf Club: consult with others. While you have sufficient information
to make a decision to insure support for the decision it is wise to share ideas with
relevant stakeholders before making the decision.

New Product Development: call a meeting a reach a consensus. You do not have
sufficient information to make a decision and it is critical that the team support the
decision.

At the end of the exercise, it is useful to review the conditions in which group
consensus should and should not be used.

3. The following activities are based on a current or recently completed group

project that you have been involved in. This project may be a student project, a
work project, or an extracurricular project.
a. How strong is the team identity on this project and why?
b. What could participants do to strengthen team identity?
c. What kind of informal activities could be used to rejuvenate the team? Why
would these activities work?

This exercise was created to encourage students to apply team identity concepts to a
real project that they are familiar with. Often it is useful to have students rate the
strength of team identity on a scale from 0-10 with 0 being no identity and 10 being a
“family.” Strength will be dependent upon how much time they spend together, how
important the project goals are, how well they work together and other factors
associated with group cohesiveness. Team rituals could be used to strengthen team
identity. Informal activities such as bowling, potlucks, miniature golf, and rafting
have been mentioned in the past by students. These activities reduce stress and
strengthen social ties.

Other Exercises: The Great Egg Drop

Instructions for the egg drop team-building exercise highlighted in the Mattel’s Project
Platypus Snapshot from Practice can be found at:

http://www.wilderdom.com/games/descriptions/GreatEggDrop.html

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Alternative variations for this exercise can also be found at this site and by entering “egg
drop exercise” in a Web search engine.

Note: Cost can be introduced by assigning different prices to materials.

Case
Kerzner Office Equipment

This case provides an opportunity to explore some of the issues surrounding the startup of
a project and formation of a team.

1. Critique Brigg’s management of the first meeting. What, if anything, should she
have done differently?

Given the time constraint and late start, Briggs probably accomplished as much as she
could in this meeting. At the same time, one might question how the other members
felt upon leaving the meeting. First, many of the members seem less than enthusiastic
about the project. Second, the members don’t have a good idea about how they are
going to accomplish the project and what kind of involvement it will require from
them. She should have anticipated the meeting times dilemma and avoided the
jousting by simply requesting the schedule information up front.

2. What barriers is she likely to encounter in completing this project?

See Question #3.

3. What can she do to overcome these barriers?

We recommend that you record students’ responses to the barriers question first on
one half of the blackboard (or on a flip chart) and then discuss and record potential
solutions to each barrier on the second half of the blackboard. One might begin the
discussion by asking students whether this will be a difficult project to manage.

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Barriers
1. Large task force (14 members)
2. Members not selected based on
skill and expertise
3. Low or indifferent commitment on
the part of some members toward
the project
4. Spatially separated
5. Limited, part-time involvement
6. No experience working together
on event projects
Solutions
Break the task force into subgroups around
major tasks
Clarify involvement, supplement expertise
with outside input, delegate carefully
Build enthusiasm by personal example,
developing a shared vision, and top
management support
Find a common meeting place, develop e-
mail list, create a project Web page,
establish communication protocols
Assess individual availability and assign
tasks accordingly
Provide strong direction and create
opportunities to get to know each other

One of the key issues Briggs has to resolve is how she will use the team to complete
the project. One path would be for her to do most of the work and consult the team
on important issues. A different path would be to delegate specific tasks to the team
(for example, deciding when the celebration should take place, deciding where it
should be held) and manage the process. This path would more consistent with the
culture at Kerzner.

4. What should she do between now and the next meeting?

She needs to meet with individual members and get some sense of the kind of
contributions they can make to the project both in terms of time and ability. She
should test some of her ideas about how to organize the project when talking to
members and revise those plans as she acquires new information.

She needs to develop a master plan for the project which includes a list of milestones,
a breakdown of major tasks, and how the team will be organized to complete the
project. She should seek the advice of people outside the organization who have
experience organizing such events.

She needs to schedule a longer second meeting to present and revise the master plan.
She needs to request an administrative assistant who can handle details. She should
persuade Tubbs to attend at least part of the next meeting to communicate the
importance of the project to the team members.

Case
Ajax Project

This case is designed to illustrate the challenges of rejuvenating a project team after a
series of setbacks.

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1. How effective has Tran been as a project manager? Explain.

Students will likely be divided in their assessment of Tran. Many will praise his
proactive response to potential cross-generation problems on the team and his
attempts at refocusing the project team after the first setback. Others will say “the
buck stops at the top” and either the original estimates were off or there must be
something wrong in how he is managing to produce the failed tests. Here it is
important to point out that the team is struggling with technical risks which are the
most difficult to manage. Here we like to point out that you can appear to do all the
right things and still fail.

2. What problem(s) does Tran face?

Beyond falling further behind schedule, the team is dishearten and losing faith in their
ability to successfully complete the project. There is potential for in-fighting, and
blame games. Motivation is low since the prospects for bonuses are perceived as
unattainable.

3. How would you go about solving them? Why?

There is no right answer here. Students typically draw upon the material from the
Rejuvenating the Project Team section of the text. Most will recommend some sort
of team-building activity that helps the team work through their disappointment and
focus on new, better ways to deal with the problems on the project. At the same time,
we think it is important that Tran discuss the project with his superiors. Nothing
affirms the right to lead more than the ability to defend. Perhaps he can persuade top
management to adjust the schedule and incentive schemes. After all they want Tran
and the team to succeed as best they can. At a minimum, it would be wise to bring in
the sponsors for a pep talk.

Case
Franklin Equipment, Ltd.
Prepared by Dr. John Drexler Jr., Oregon State University

Trade and popular publications often describe strategies for improving organization
performance in the most positive light, representing them as a panacea for all the ills and
problems an organization or project team might experience. However, the problems in
adopting and implementing these strategies are rarely presented. Yet, there is no shortage
of publications on the benefits and effectiveness of team-building and conflict-
management interventions.

Because interventions are complex and have associated minefields, it is important that
managers approach them with some amount of caution. This case offers students the
opportunity to consider a difficult situation for successfully executing a team-building
intervention.

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Based on real events, FEL describes an impossible situation where Jobe is expected to
help two people who have had a long-standing hatred for each other work well together.
Given that Perry has a positive outcome associated with not cooperating with Rankins
(Rankins will be fired), Jobe is not likely to be successful. Nevertheless Jobe is not
interested in being associated with a failure early in his tenure at FEL.

Students should be encouraged to approach FEL with a focus on analyzing whether team-
building would be appropriate. While the answer is obviously no, they should consider
how the dynamics of the situation would doom such an intervention to failure. These
dynamics include in particular Gatenby’s naive expectations about what team building
can do and his belief that his upward mobility rides on the success of Project Abu Dhabi.

The case outlines the early steps of team-building interventions. It describes the
consultant and his beginning approach to collecting information from the principal parties
involved in Project Abu Dhabi. It is a classic case of the consultant being ordered, as the
text says, “to fix my team for me.”

1. Evaluate the criteria FEL uses to assign managers to project teams. What
efficiencies do these criteria create? What are the resulting problems?

The criteria include the skill and expertise of the manager as well as his or her
availability to work on a project given other commitments. Such an arrangement
creates cost efficiencies because it increases the chances that all managers will have
work to do that can be billed to a customer. In addition, it evens out the workload
across people over time by reducing the extent to which a manager is overworked at
one point in time and underworked at another. However, the arrangement does not
take into account the compatibility of various team members in the workplace.

2. Why is it even more important that project team members work well together on
international projects such as Project Abu Dhabi?

Working in a very different culture creates a number of problems for effective teams.
There the constant challenges of understanding and communicating with the host
nationals as well as the difficulties of learning customs and expected behaviors.
Attention must be paid to not offending the host nationals and to developing an
effective working relationship with them. Dysfunctional conflict among team
members often becomes apparent to the host nationals, creating confusion and
opening up opportunities for them to take advantage of the situation. Cross-cultural
projects are difficult to manage even when the project team members work well
together.

3. Discuss the dilemma that Jobe now faces.

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Chapter 11 - Managing Project Teams

Jobe is caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. He left his previous
employer to become an internal facilitator at FEL, but Gatenby’s expectations for him
are clearly unrealistic. And Gatenby has a personal stake in Project Abu Dhabi’s
success.

This is clearly a case of what the text calls dysfunctional conflict, and Perry and
Rankins clearly interfere with each other’s ability to perform. FEL cannot perform on
this contract if the status quo is maintained. Arbitrating, controlling, or accepting the
conflict are not viable alternatives in this situation. Five years of animosity between
Perry and Rankins is not likely to go away. Moreover, the structure and outcomes
Gatenby created for Perry and Rankins are not going to work: while both have goals
to cooperate with each other, there is a payoff for Perry if he does not cooperate with
Rankins.

4. What should Jobe recommend to Gatenby?

This is going to be difficult. Jobe wants to be a successful facilitator early in his FEL
tenure and knows that Project Abu Dhabi as currently staffed is not likely to perform
up to standards. But he also recognizes Gatenby’s stake in the success of the project.

Jobe needs to educate Gatenby on the limitations of team-building – Gatenby has

already experienced their successes and should be reminded of them. And Jobe needs
to explain why the history between Perry and Rankins and the payoff to Perry for not
cooperating work against success at Abu Dhabi. The dynamics of the present
situation exceed Jobe’s (or anyone’s) skills to create effective teamwork.

• Convince top management that Project Abu Dhabi requires an exception be made
to its staffing policy and request that compatibility be added to the criteria in
future projects.
• Do not begin Project Abu Dhabi with Perry and Rankins on staff. The two-month
trial period is unworkable and unlikely to succeed.
• Reassign Perry or Rankins or both, assuming both have contributed well on other
projects.
• Don’t fire only Rankins because of his inability to work with Perry since both
have contributed to the problem. Firing Rankins would only send the message
that there is a payoff to being stubborn. Perry also needs to be held accountable
and should not be reinforced for blaming everything on Rankins.

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