MISG 621

Project Management
Lecture 9
Project Resource Management
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Explain the importance of good human resource management on
projects, including the current state of the global IT workforce
and future implications for it
• Define project human resource management and understand its
processes
• Summarize key concepts for managing people by understanding
theories of motivation, influence, and power; how people and
teams can become more effective; emotional intelligence; and
leadership
 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Discuss human resource management planning and be able to create a human
resource plan, project organizational chart, responsibility assignment matrix,
and resource histogram
• Understand important issues involved in project staff acquisition and explain
the concepts of resource assignments, resource loading, and resource leveling
• Assist in team development with training, team-building activities, and
reward systems
• Explain and apply several tools and techniques to help manage a project team
and summarize general advice on managing teams
• Describe how project management software can assist in project human
resource management
THE IMPORTANCE OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

• Many corporate executives have said, “People are our most

important asset”
• People determine the success and failure of organizations and
projects
THE GLOBAL IT WORKFORCE
• Although there have been ups and downs in the IT labor market, there will
always be a need for good IT workers
• By the end of 2014, there were almost 3 billion Internet users and 2.3 billion
mobile-broadband subscriptions
• By 2020, ICT spending is projected to grow to nearly $5 trillion
• Project management was number two on Computerworld’s hottest skill list for
2015
• PMI estimates demand for 15.7 million project management jobs from 2010 to
2020
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF IT HUMAN
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
• Proactive organizations are addressing workforce needs by
• improving benefits
• redefining work hours and incentives
• finding future workers
 GLOBAL ISSUES
• In 2013 Yahoo’s CEO issued a memo stating that employees could
no longer work from home, causing quite a stir throughout the
world
• Diebold’s CEO took the opposite approach and started recruiting
employees who wanted to work from home, luring the best and
brightest workers from Yahoo and other companies cutting back
on telecommuting
• The Huffington Post believes that telecommuting has won, and
even Yahoo has softened its stance
WHAT WENT WRONG?

• A 2014 report by CompTIA found a gap between skills that

employers wanted and what they actually found in the IT
workforce
• 68 percent of IT firms report having a very challenging time
finding new staff
• 58 percent of businesses are concerned about the quality and
quantity of IT talent available for hire
• The number one strategy to handle understaffing is requiring
workers to put in more hours
WHAT IS PROJECT HUMAN
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT?
• Making the most effective use of the people involved with a
project
• Processes include
• Planning human resource management: identifying and documenting
project roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships
• Acquiring the project team: getting the needed personnel assigned to
and working on the project
• Developing the project team: building individual and group skills to
enhance project performance
• Managing the project team: tracking team member performance,
motivating team members, providing timely feedback, resolving issues
and conflicts, and coordinating changes to help enhance project
performance
FIGURE 9-1. PROJECT HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT SUMMARY
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
• Emotional intelligence
• Leadership
INTRINSIC AND EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION
• Intrinsic motivation causes people to participate in an activity for their own
enjoyment
• Extrinsic motivation causes people to do something for a reward or to avoid a
penalty
• For example, some children take piano lessons for intrinsic motivation (they
enjoy it) while others take them for extrinsic motivation (to get a reward or
avoid punishment)
MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
• Abraham Maslow argued that humans possess unique qualities that enable them
to make independent choices, thus giving them control of their destiny
• Maslow developed a hierarchy of needs which states that people’s behaviors
are guided or motivated by a sequence of needs
FIGURE 9-2. MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
HERZBERG’S MOTIVATIONAL AND HYGIENE FACTORS
• Frederick Herzberg wrote several famous books and articles about worker
motivation. He distinguished between
• motivational factors: achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility,
advancement, and growth, which produce job satisfaction
• hygiene factors: cause dissatisfaction if not present, but do not motivate workers to do
more. Examples include larger salaries, more supervision, and a more attractive work
environment
TABLE 9-1: EXAMPLES OF HERZBERG’S HYGIENE FACTORS AND
MOTIVATORS
MEDIA SNAPSHOT
• RSA Animate used its popular whiteboard drawing technique to summarize key
points from Pink’s book in a YouTube video called “Drive: The surprising truth
about what motivates us”
• Pink suggests that managers focus on the following three motivators:
• Autonomy
• Mastery
• Purpose
MCCLELLAND’S ACQUIRED-NEEDS THEORY

• Specific needs are acquired or learned over time and shaped by

life experiences, including:
• Achievement (nAch): Achievers like challenging projects with
achievable goals and lots of feedback
• Affiliation (nAff): People with high nAff desire harmonious relationships
and need to feel accepted by others, so managers should try to create a
cooperative work environment for them
• Power: (nPow): People with a need for power desire either personal
power (not good) or institutional power (good for the organization).
Provide institutional power seekers with management opportunities
MCGREGOR’S THEORY X AND Y
• Douglas McGregor popularized the human relations approach to
management in the 1960s
• Theory X: assumes workers dislike and avoid work, so managers
must use coercion, threats and various control schemes to get
workers to meet objectives
• Theory Y: assumes individuals consider work as natural as play
or rest and enjoy the satisfaction of esteem and self-actualization
needs
• Theory Z: introduced in 1981 by William Ouchi and is based on
the Japanese approach to motivating workers, emphasizing trust,
quality, collective decision making, and cultural values
THAMHAIN AND WILEMON’S WAYS TO HAVE
INFLUENCE ON PROJECTS
1. Authority: the legitimate hierarchical right to issue orders
2. Assignment: the project manager's perceived ability to influence a
worker's later work assignments
3. Budget: the project manager's perceived ability to authorize others'
use of discretionary funds
4. Promotion: the ability to improve a worker's position
5. Money: the ability to increase a worker's pay and benefits
THAMHAIN AND WILEMON’S WAYS TO HAVE INFLUENCE ON
PROJECTS (CONT’D)

6. Penalty: the project manager's ability to cause punishment

7. Work challenge: the ability to assign work that capitalizes on a worker's
enjoyment of doing a particular task
8. Expertise: the project manager's perceived special knowledge that others deem
important
9. Friendship: the ability to establish friendly personal relationships between the
project manager and others
WAYS TO INFLUENCE THAT HELP AND HURT PROJECTS

• Projects are more likely to succeed when project managers

influence with
• expertise
• work challenge
• Projects are more likely to fail when project managers rely too
heavily on
• authority
• money
• penalty
POWER
• Power is the potential ability to influence behavior to get people to do things
they would not otherwise do
• Types of power include
• Coercive
• Legitimate
• Expert
• Reward
• Referent
 COVEY AND IMPROVING
EFFECTIVENESS
• Project managers can apply Covey’s 7 habits to improve effectiveness on
projects
• Be proactive
• Begin with the end in mind
• Put first things first
• Think win/win
• Seek first to understand, then to be understood
• Synergize
• Sharpen the saw
EMPATHIC LISTENING AND
RAPPORT
• Good project managers are empathic listeners - they listen
with the intent to understand
• Before you can communicate with others, you have to have
rapport – a relation of harmony, conformity, accord, or affinity
• Mirroring is the matching of certain behaviors of the other
person, a technique to help establish rapport
• IT professionals need to develop empathic listening and other
people skills to improve relationships with users and other
stakeholders
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
• Howard Gardner’s book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences
introduced the concept of using more than one way to think of and measure
human intelligence
• Emotional intelligence (EI) is knowing and managing one’s own emotions and
understanding the emotions of others for improved performance
• 71 percent of U.S. hiring managers say they value EI more than IQ
LEADERSHIP

• There is no one best way to be a leader

• Most experts agree that the best leaders are able to adapt their style to needs
of the situation
• Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence and Primal Leadership,
describes six leadership styles:
1. Visionary
2. Coaching
3. Affiliative
4. Democratic
5. Pacesetting
6. Commanding
WHAT WENT RIGHT?
• PMI introduced the PMI Talent Triangle in 2015 to emphasize the need for
more than technical skills for project managers
• The Talent Triangle includes:
• Technical project management
• Strategic and business management
• Leadership
DEVELOPING THE HUMAN RESOURCE PLAN

• Involves identifying and documenting project

roles, responsibilities, and reporting
relationships
• Contents include
• project organizational charts
• staffing management plan
• responsibility assignment matrixes
• resource histograms
FIGURE 9-3. SAMPLE ORGANIZATIONAL CHART FOR A LARGE IT
PROJECT
FIGURE 9-4. WORK DEFINITION AND ASSIGNMENT PROCESS
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
• Can be created in different ways to meet unique project needs
FIGURE 9-5. SAMPLE RESPONSIBILITY ASSIGNMENT MATRIX (RAM)
 TABLE 9-2. SAMPLE RACI CHART

R = responsibility
A = accountability, only one A per task
C = consultation
I = informed
Note that some people reverse the definitions of responsible and accountable.
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
FIGURE 9-6. SAMPLE RESOURCE
HISTOGRAM
ACQUIRING THE PROJECT TEAM
• Acquiring qualified people for teams is crucial
• The project manager who is the smartest person on the team has
done a poor job of recruiting!
• It’s important to assign the appropriate type and number of
people to work on projects at the appropriate times
RESOURCE ASSIGNMENT

• Staffing plans and good hiring procedures are important, as are

incentives for recruiting and retention
• Some companies give their employees one dollar for every hour a new
person they helped hire works
• Some organizations allow people to work from home as an incentive

• Enrollment in U.S. computer science and engineering programs

has dropped almost in half since 2000, and one-third of U.S.
workers were over the age of 50 by 2010
• CIO’s researchers suggest that organizations rethink hiring
practices and incentives to hire and retain IT talent
BEST PRACTICE

• Best practices can be applied to include the best places for

people to work
• For example, Fortune Magazine lists the “100 Best Companies to Work
For” in the United States every year, with Google taking the honors for
the sixth time in 2015
• Working Mothers Magazine lists the best companies in the U.S. for
women based on benefits for working families
• The Timesonline (www.timesonline.co.uk) provides the Sunday Times
list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For, a key benchmark against
which UK companies can judge their Best Practice performance as
employers
RESOURCE LOADING
• Resource loading refers to the amount of individual resources an existing
schedule requires during specific time periods
• 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 means more resources than are available are assigned to
perform work at a given time
FIGURE 9-7. SAMPLE HISTOGRAM SHOWING AN OVERALLOCATED
INDIVIDUAL
RESOURCE LEVELING
• Resource leveling is a technique for resolving resource conflicts by delaying
tasks
• The main purpose of resource leveling is to create a smoother distribution of
resource usage and reduce overallocation
FIGURE 9-8. RESOURCE LEVELING
EXAMPLE
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
DEVELOPING THE PROJECT TEAM
• The main goal of team development is to help people work together more
effectively to improve project performance
• It takes teamwork to successfully complete most projects
 TUCKMAN MODEL OF TEAM
DEVELOPMENT
• Forming
• Storming
• Norming
• Performing
• Adjourning
TRAINING
• Training can help people understand themselves, each other, and how to work
better in teams
• Team building activities include
• physical challenges
• psychological preference indicator tools
MEYERS-BRIGGS TYPE INDICATOR (MBTI)

• MBTI is a popular tool for determining personality preferences

and helping teammates understand each other
• Four dimensions include:
• Extrovert/Introvert (E/I)
• Sensation/Intuition (S/N)
• Thinking/Feeling (T/F)
• Judgment/Perception (J/P)
• NTs or rationals are attracted to technology fields
• IT people vary most from the general population in not being
extroverted or sensing
SOCIAL STYLES PROFILE
• People are perceived as behaving primarily in one of four zones, based on their
assertiveness and responsiveness:
• Drivers
• Expressives
• Analyticals
• Amiables
• People on opposite corners (drivers and amiables, analyticals and expressives)
may have difficulties getting along
FIGURE 9-9. SOCIAL STYLES
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

FIGURE 9-10. THE DISC PROFILE
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
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.
TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES FOR MANAGING PROJECT TEAMS

• Observation and conversation

• Project performance appraisals
• Interpersonal skills
• Conflict management
 CONFLICT HANDLING MODES
1. Confrontation: Directly face a conflict using a problem-solving approach
2. Compromise: Use a give-and-take approach
3. Smoothing: De-emphasize areas of difference and emphasize areas of
agreement
4. Forcing: The win-lose approach
5. Withdrawal: Retreat or withdraw from an actual or potential
disagreement
6. Collaborating: Decision makers incorporate different viewpoints and
insights to develop consensus and commitment
FIGURE 9-11. CONFLICT HANDLING
MODES
CONFLICT CAN BE GOOD

• Conflict often produces important results, such as new ideas,

better alternatives, and motivation to work harder and more
collaboratively

• Groupthink: Conformance to the values or ethical standards of a

group. Groupthink can develop if there are no conflicting
viewpoints

• Research suggests that task-related conflict often improves team

performance, but emotional conflict often depresses team
performance
FIVE DYSFUNCTIONS OF A TEAM
• Patrick Lencioni, author of several books on teams, says that
“Teamwork remains the one sustainable competitive
advantage that has been large untapped”*
• 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.
GENERAL ADVICE ON TEAMS

• Be patient and kind 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
GENERAL ADVICE ON TEAMS (CONT’D)
• Plan some social activities to help project team members and other stakeholders
get to know each other better
• Stress team identity
• Nurture team members and encourage them to help each other
• Take additional actions to work with virtual team members
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
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
 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