HUMAN RESOURCE

MANAGEMENT
WHAT IS PROJECT HUMAN
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT?
 Making the most effective use of the people
involved with a project
 Processes include
 Plan human resource management (Planning)
 Acquiring the project team (Executing)
 Developing the project team (Executing)
 Managing the project team (Control/Monitor)

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 PROJECT HUMAN RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT SUMMARY

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 KEYS TO MANAGING PEOPLE
 Psychologists and management theorists have
devoted much research and thought to the field of
managing people at work
 Important areas related to project management
include:
 motivation theories
 influence and power
 effectiveness

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 WAYS TO INFLUENCE THAT
HELP AND HURT PROJECTS
 Projects are more likely to succeed when project
managers influence with expertise

 Projects are more likely to fail when project

managers rely too heavily on authority, money, or
penalty

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POWER
 Power is the potential ability to influence behavior
to get people to do things they would not otherwise
do
 Types of power
 Coercive power
 Legitimate power
 Expert power
 Reward power
 Referent power

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LEGITIMATE POWER
 This is a type of formal power that you receive
when you occupy a certain position in your
organization.
 This type of power is recognized by subordinates.
For this reason, it works well in hierarchical
organizations such as the military.
 Effective leaders don’t depend solely on legitimate
power. Instead, they use it in combination with
others.
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REWARD POWER
 Reward power means having the capacity to offer
rewards or benefits in exchange for carrying out a
task or achieving a result.
 Rewards usually come in the form of raises,
benefits, promotions, or public praise. However,
this type of power is not always as effective as
some leaders think.

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EXPERT POWER
 Expert power comes from having both deep technical knowledge and
extensive experience in your field of expertise.
 When you’re the expert in your field, people in your company naturally
come to you to benefit from your knowledge. Your expertise gives you
credibility, and people trust and respect your opinions.
 Expert power gives you the ability to influence co-workers across all
levels of the organization. This enables you to steer the growth and
development of both individual colleagues and the company as a whole.
 However, a true expert knows they must continue developing their
knowledge and skills to maintain credibility.

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REFERENT POWER
 According to Nicole Lipkin, author of “
What Keeps Leaders Up At Night,” this is the type of power that gives a
leader the greatest influence.
 Leaders get referent power through qualities that inspire trust and
respect in their colleagues. These include honesty and integrity.
 A person who holds referent power has excellent interpersonal skills
and exudes confidence. This makes them natural leaders. They listen to
their colleagues and offer help and support.
 This type of power is internal rather than external. It is a personal power
that cannot be handed to you by someone else.

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COERCIVE POWER
 Coercive power is one of the most commonly used in many
workplaces, yet it is also the least effective.
 It involves using threats to force people to do your will.
They might not agree with what they have to do, but they do
it out of fear of repercussions such as losing their jobs.
 Leaders never use coercive power.
 Coercive power creates unhappy, disengaged employees and
is best avoided. It can also negatively
affect employee retention efforts.

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 PLANNING PROCESS GROUP:
DEVELOPING THE HUMAN RESOURCE PLAN

 Used to determine the roles that will perform

schedule activities and to develop the staff
management plan to fill the roles with team
members
 Contents include
 project organizational charts
 staffing management plan
 responsibility assignment matrixes
 resource histograms

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 SAMPLE ORGANIZATIONAL CHART
FOR A LARGE IT PROJECT

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 WORK DEFINITION AND
ASSIGNMENT PROCESS

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RESPONSIBILITY ASSIGNMENT
MATRICES
 A responsibility assignment matrix (RAM) is a
matrix that maps the work of the project as
described in the WBS to the people responsible for
performing the work as described in the OBS

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 SAMPLE RACI CHART

R = responsibility
A = accountability, only one A per task
C = consultation
I = informed

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STAFFING MANAGEMENT PLANS
AND RESOURCE HISTOGRAMS
 A staffing management plan describes when and how
people will be added to and taken off the project team
 A resource histogram is a column chart that shows
the number of resources assigned to a project over
time

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PLANNING PROCESS GROUP:
ACQUIRING THE PROJECT TEAM

 Acquiring qualified people for teams is crucial

 It’s important to assign the appropriate type and
number of people to work on projects at the appropriate
times

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INPUTS INTO ACQUIRING TEAM

 Human Resource Plan

 Enterprise Environmental Factors
 Availability. Who is available and when are they
available?
 Ability. What competencies do people possess?
 Experience. Have the people done similar or related
work? Have they done it well?
 Interests. Are the people interested in working on this
project?
 Cost. How much will each team member be paid,
particularly if they are contracted from outside the
organization?

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 RESOURCE ASSIGNMENT
 Staffing plans and good hiring procedures are
important, as are incentives for recruiting and
retention
 Do your homework
 What happens when you don’t?

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 BE AWARE OF RESOURCE LOADING
 Resource loading
 Helps project managers develop a general understanding of the
demands a project will make on the organization’s resources
and individual people’s schedules
 Overallocation

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 RESOURCE LEVELING
 Resource leveling is a technique for resolving resource
conflicts by delaying tasks

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 BENEFITS OF RESOURCE LEVELING

 When resources are used on a more constant basis,

they require less management
 It may enable project managers to use a just-in-time
inventory type of policy for using subcontractors or
other expensive resources
 It results in fewer problems for project personnel and
accounting department
 It often improves morale

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PLANNING PROCESS GROUP:
DEVELOPING THE PROJECT TEAM

 The main goal of team development is to help

people work together more effectively to improve
project performance
 Team Development (progressive stages)

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DEVELOPING THE PROJECT TEAM

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METHOD OF TEAM BUILDING
• Team building allows to creation of reliable, friendly, and long-term
interpersonal relationships between project team members
• Team building activities may aim at preventing conflicts and solving team
problems.
• Five stages of team building:

• Forming allows team members to gather and learn about interests and
concerns of each other.
• Storming
• Allows the team to address the project problems
• They function as a unit.
• Team members will become more open with each other as they express
their own ideas and thoughts
• Confront the project manager about certain aspects of the project.

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 Norming
 Team members will begin to settle to the task at hand.
 Conflicts will be resolved
 Teams will develop “norms” around how they work together.
 A hierarchy is established and the project will progress at a greater
pace
 Performing
 Team members will work together as a unit and significant progress
will be made.
 Project management will focus on the delegation of work and on
future team building.
 Less supervision will be required as the team will be highly
motivated and independent.

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DISC PROFILES
 Also uses a four-dimensional model of normal
behavior
 Dominance
 Influence
 Steadiness
 Compliance

 People in opposite quadrants can have problems

understanding each other

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 THE DISC PROFILE
ACCLIMATION

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 REWARD AND RECOGNITION
SYSTEMS
 Team-based reward and recognition systems can
promote teamwork
 Focus on rewarding teams for achieving specific goals
 Allow time for team members to mentor and help each
other to meet project goals and develop human
resources

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 CONTROL/MONITORING PROCESS GROUP:
MANAGING THE PROJECT TEAM

 Project managers must 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
 if corrective or preventive actions should be
recommended
 if updates are needed to the project management plan or
organizational process assets.

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 CONFLICT HANDLING MODES

1. Confrontation
2. Compromise
3. Smoothing
4. Forcing
5. Withdrawal
6. Collaborating

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CONFLICT CAN BE GOOD
 Conflict often produces important results, such as
new ideas, better alternatives, and motivation to
work harder and more collaboratively
 Research suggests that task-related conflict often
improves team performance, but emotional conflict
often depresses team performance

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 COMMON SOURCES OF CONFLICT
 Work scope
 Resource assignments
 Schedule
 Costs
 Technical opinions
 Administrative procedures
 Responsibilities
 Personality clashes

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 ROOT CAUSE OF CONFLICT
 The PM has final responsibility to resolve
or manage any conflict that affects project
success.
 For example, suppose two people are yelling at
each other during a meeting. Asking them to not
yell fixes the symptom, but not the root cause of
the conflict, which may be a difference of opinion
about an issue due to different assumptions being
made by each person.

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FIVE DYSFUNCTIONS OF A TEAM

 The five dysfunctions of teams are

1. Absence of trust
2. Fear of conflict
3. Lack of commitment
4. Avoidance of accountability
5. Inattention to results

*Lencioni, Patrick, “Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” Jossey-

Bass: San Francisco, CA (2005), p. 3.

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GENERAL ADVICE ON TEAMS

 Be patient 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

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USING SOFTWARE TO ASSIST IN
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

 Software can help in producing RAMS and

resource histograms
 Project management software includes several
features related to human resource management
such as
 Assigning resources
 Identifying potential resource shortages or
underutilization
 Leveling resources

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PROJECT RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
INVOLVES MUCH MORE THAN USING
SOFTWARE
 Project managers must
 Treat people with consideration and respect
 Understand what motivates them
 Communicate carefully with them

 Focus on your goal of enabling project team

members to deliver their best work

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CHAPTER SUMMARY

 Project human resource management includes the

processes required to make the most effective use of the
people involved with a project
 Main processes include
 Plan human resource management
 Acquire project team
 Develop project team
 Manage project team

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REVIEW QUESTIONS
 What HR management is important for your project success?
 What are the stages of the team-building process?
 What is conflict and its causes?
 How can you handle conflicts among your project team?
 How does software help you to manage project teams?
 If you are assigned as project manager, what would be the necessary
skills you are expected to have to effectively manage your project
teams?

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