Building and Managing the Successful Project Team

Most business owners and senior management would agree that effective teamwork is one method for performance success in meeting customer needs and maximizing opportunities in the marketplace. Some would argue that it is vital that different specialty groups cooperate and communicate as teams to share and create new ideas in an effort to maintain a competitive pace. Cross-departmental teams can assist in breaking down walls and move people beyond their own frame of reference. Project teams are the choice to undertake initiatives to improve a process, introduce new products or services. Team members are called upon for their expertise and ideas on how to contribute to the achievement of the organization’s goals. Done properly project teams are one way to save time and maximize resources.

A project team’s performance and its effectiveness can be enhanced through an organized and structured framework for managing the team process. The following Project Team Survival Basics provide an overview of key components in building and managing a team to leverage its performance: 

1. Pick the right project team leader. Along with keeping the team focused and performing to meet its milestones and intended purpose, the project leader’s role is create a team environment where input and developing ideas and solving problems are encouraged. Don’t make the mistake of assigning someone without these skills to manage a team or not be open to different points of view. It is not the place for members to be inhibited from speaking their minds. 
2. Do your homework to justify the project team’s initiative and clarify its objective. Having data helps clarify the opportunity and objective and gain support from top management and others in the organization. This could be hard data like customer surveys, sales trends, or revenue opportunities. It could also be anecdotal. Your field sales people are hearing complaints from customers. Enough feedback to arouse your interest that suggests you need to look into it. 
3. Select the project team members. Now that you have defined the objectives, it enables you to select team participants that represent the areas involved. You will be able identify the associated tasks and who is responsible for them. Be sure to consider team members with a different frame of reference to share another perspective and area of expertise. 
4. Have the team develop a project team charter that includes its own performance criteria and operating guidelines. Conduct a kick-off meeting with your new team and tell them exactly what their mission is and proposed deadlines. Based on their mission, ask them to create a team charter that documents their what, why, where, when, who and how. The team charter strengthens and formalizes the team’s existence. Performance criteria involving target completion dates need to be established and agreed upon. Without milestones, the team will not have any way to gauge their progress and could lose focus. There should be a simple meeting summary and an agenda for the next meeting provided to project team members prior to the next meeting. 
5. Don’t assume you have the answers. It is pretty typical for team members to bring their preconceived notions on how best to meet customer needs or solve a problem. It is fair to say that at times we have all considered ourselves “experts” even when we look at the problem from a distance. 
6. Use data and direct observation to make informed decisions. Team members should be encouraged to get close to the problem, operation or customer. Benchmarking and direct observation are sample procedures to help control premature or uniformed decisions. Teams need to be data driven with analysis being a critical part of their process. If the data does not exist, then have the reports created to help them understand their subject. This is not to say there is no place for intuition, but we need to insure that where possible, reliable and verifiable observation and data analysis occurs to leverage our sense of direction.  
7. Create measurement criteria for the initiative. The project team’s role can be to recommend business practice improvements, introduce new products or services. They need to create measurement criteria to evaluate the results of their recommended actions.
8. Be a proactive and dedicated communicator. Be sure that the rest of the organization understands what your mission is. Do not take for granted that everyone is informed. By being dedicated to communicating your team’s work, you create a dialogue with others in the organization to share updates in their areas that may be of value to your team. 
9. Think about the ripples. This survival basic is designed to create an image that those who could be affected by the project are aware of it. This prevents reactions like “you are changing what on Monday?” As the work of the project team evolves, it may impact areas that may have not have been considered in the planning stages or another department makes a change that is new knowledge to the team. Keeping mind potential impacted areas will smooth implementation.
10. Conduct project update meetings. Make it a formal part of the process to keep relevant people throughout the organization informed. Providing them with periodic progress results allows them to plan for the changes and add input that the team may have missed.