Identifying the Required Number of Personnel and their Competencies

Requirement analysis is done before initialising any project. It determines the quantities of resources that are needed in the project. Depending on demand of the project, primary resources are identified. However, estimation of the number of personnel and their competencies can be made by analysing the amount of risk involved in the project and amount of effort that is required in the project (Kerzner and Kerzner 2017). The work break down structure accurately identifies the project elements that will require personnel to manage them. Resource plan that is prepared before the start of the project exactly mentions the quantity of human resources that is needed.   

The project scope and project charter helps to identify the project deliverables that facilitates in selecting appropriate team structure (Marchewka 2014). The skillset of each individual will help to identify individual roles for a particular project. For example, in a construction project, a separate team who are identified by qualification does planning of the construction project. Architectural engineers along with civil engineers does the planning of the project. Therefore, identified skills are an important parameter to identify roles of individual for a particular project. 

The project staff should be allocated in such a way that the available resources are used in the best possible way. The capabilities, interests and ambition of team members guide in staff division. The allocation of team members should be fair, equal and justified. Capabilities of the staffs would help project managers allocate tasks dynamically. Knowing the interests of people would help in making project staffs effective (Heagney 2016). Project staffs should be recruited based on the project deliverables and demand of the project. Based on competency, project managers should select project staffs. This would help in effective teamwork. The timing of these actions would be determined from project schedule and project charter. 

Performance of project staff is an important measure to understand the success or failure of a project. Therefore, the performance of project staffs can be managed by implementing a performance improvement plan (PIP) in the project. Some of the techniques that will help to manage staff performance are proper performance feedback processes to staffs, setting project goals and objectives clearly before them, career development planning for them and so on (Larson et al. 2014). Effective communication between project staffs and managers help in managing staff performance largely. Staffs feel enthusiastic and actively participates in the project. Appraisal of employee performance is one of the main technique to improve staff performance.

Identifying the Appropriate Team Structure and Individual Roles

Describe how team members and other stakeholders would be informed of their job roles, authority, responsibilities and performance expectations.

Job roles, responsibilities, authority and performance expectations can be informed to team members and stakeholders through proper communication. Communication is an important method for effective project management. Before start of the project, managers should clearly state job roles to team members, the task they have to carry out in order to meet project objectives and goals. Therefore, a proper project scope should be set before initialising of the project. Allocation and assigning of tasks to project staffs are done through proper communication. The project schedule also help to inform project team members about their roles and responsibilities in the project. 

Any kind of discrepancy in the project help to identify the knowledge and training needs that will bridge gaps. Task assessment techniques like inventory questionnaires and skill analysis will help to pinpoint training needs. It also identify gaps between already existing training and the training that is required to improve staff performance. Individual assessment of team members will help to identify learning capacity, existing skills and qualification of them. The identified training needs can be implemented by holding training sessions and workshops where project team members will be actively involved to gain knowledge. 

The performance of team members can be appraised on several metrics. They are attendance, efficiency, helpfulness, initiative and quality of work. The team members should not have poor attendance or a track record of late coming. Researchers have found that helpfulness is one of the main metric for performance evaluation. It identifies the capacity of a team member to work in a team that would help the team to tackle difficult tasks. Initiative of a team member to take important decisions can change the project environment that makes it an important metric to be appraised (Fleming and Koppelman 2016). High quality of work and efficiency should also be appraised. The methods of appraisal can be increasing gross salary, giving a token for good performance and promotion.  

The issues of the poor performance of a team member can be managed by providing training to the particular member. Training will help in increasing knowledge of member that will lead to better performance. For example, a team member involved in a construction project is facing problem in testing soil of the plot that has been selected for construction. Training provided to him in soil testing would help in effectively testing the soil. Motivating the employee to meet project goals and objectives will help him perform better. The project managers should communicate effectively with the particular team member to discuss issues that he/she is facing. Friendly behaviour of project managers not only improve employee performance however also help in keeping them enthusiastic and active. 

Recruiting, Selecting, and Allocating Project Staff

The external issues that adversely affect team performance are individual team members economic and social backgrounds. The team member with strong financial background might feel reluctant to perform his/her job that would adversely affect team performance. A team member who has necessity for money might be dedicated to his work that will improve team performance. A team member who is social will feel comfortable working in a team and help team to tackle difficult task however, an unsocial team member might face issues in working in a team that would adversely affect team performance. The internal issues affecting team performance adversely are bitter relationship among team members and between team members and project manager. A good team manager can improve as well as adversely affect team performance. 

The two basic issues that result in team and stakeholder conflict are discrimination issues and performance review conflicts. For example, a team member is continuously feeling that the menial tasks are being assigned to him in the whole group. This team member can raise verbal conflict between the team and the stakeholders like project manager and so on.

During performance appraisals a team member might feel that he/she did not get deserved appraises and might get angry thereby raising conflicts against project stakeholders. These issues can be managed by dividing project tasks equally among all team members based on effectiveness and efficiency of the member. Setting proper appraisal metric might help in avoiding performance review conflicts. 

Conflicting resource requirements within a project can be managed by sticking to project schedule, project charter, project plan and work breakdown structure. These structures help to clarify resource requirements before start of the project. They provide the exact amount of resources that is demanded by project deliverables. The resources are grouped into facilities, material, equipment and information. The amount of capital that will be required for the project is defined in the budget plan of the project. The requirement analysis also help to determine the kind of resources and quantity needed.  

Team disbandment is an essential step that is often overlooked in team building. The methods by which team can be disbanded are congratulating them for completing project goals and objectives. Celebrating accomplishments with them would be another step towards disbandment. Reviewing of team members personal contributions to the team, discussing about the problems faced by them while meeting goals of the project are some of the initiative taken for team disbandment. Taking suggestions from them for future projects can be a healthy way of performing team dissolution.   

Managing the Performance of Project Staff

The lessons learned should be identified in order to promote the recurrence of desirable outcomes and eliminate the recurrence of undesirable outcomes. The lessons consists of information about the project in general, budgeting, procurement, communication, information about sponsors and customers, changes that are needed in the project. The human resources lessons learned could be identified and documented in the lessons learned template. The template will be given to each team member to fill him or her out. This will reduce the pressure on project managers to document human resource lessons. The documented lessons should be stored in a central repository.  

Identifying the categories into which the stakeholders can be categorized into is one way of identifying the stakeholders. The primary, secondary and key stakeholders can be identified through this process. Stakeholder analysis is another way of identifying the stakeholders. Identifying key stakeholders also help to reduce the risk of omission (Too and Weaver 2014). They should be part of every phase of the work, so that they can both contribute and take ownership. Their knowledge of the community and understanding of its needs can prove invaluable in helping you to avoid mistakes in your approach and in the people, you choose to involve.

There are various stakeholder interests that are considered. They are economic interests, social interests, work, time, environment, physical health, mental health and safety interests (Mir and Pinnington 2014). Training program given to the employees improve their economic prospects. For example, zoning regulations have economic consequences on various economic groups. The stakeholders should be involved in decision-making that might improve their work life and accommodate their interests. By this process a particular interest of a stakeholder can be identified. Another particular interest that can be identified within the stakeholders is their urge to conserve resources and give attention to climate changes. Racial harmony can also be improved to increase stakeholder’s interests. 

A project team member might face problem in carrying out his responsibilities and therefore he might take the help of a challenging stakeholder. I as another team member would like to assist him in collecting more information regarding the project. Help him identify the areas where he is facing issues. This will help him in engaging effectively with the stakeholder. I would also help him in framing the questions that he would ask the stakeholder. His work progress should also be noted so that the stakeholder get a clear idea about the issues faced by him. 

Informing Team Members and Stakeholders of Job Roles, Authority, Responsibilities, and Performance Expectations

The project managers mainly delegates tasks to project team members. Depending on project requirements, tasks are distributed among team members. For example, in a construction project the two activities that can be delegated to project team members are creating the plan of the project and construction of desired structure according to drawn plan. The delegated activities should be according to qualification of each team member. According to the above example, planning of the construction project can only be done by either by architectural engineers or civil engineers. Therefore, the tasks should be delegated to team members as per their roles that they can perform. 

The key stakeholders in a project might include project managers, project sponsors, steering committee as well as the customers. The behavioural expectations of a project managers can be clarified by taking feedbacks from the team members and other stakeholders. Project managers mostly communicate with team members of the project. Therefore, they are the ones who will be able to justify stakeholder’s behaviour (Mok Shen and Yang 2015). The behavioural expectations of project sponsors can be clarified by project managers. The customers mainly communicate with the project managers and therefore for their behavioural clarification project managers should be questioned. 

The performance of stakeholders can be reviewed by taking into consideration various priority areas. They include building effective relationship with project team members and understanding expectations and outcomes of the project effectively (Eskerod and Huemann 2016). Additionally, the stakeholders should carry out responsibilities according to the policy laid down by the company. He should be able to raise awareness on sustainability issues. The features of stakeholder that improves performance are transparency and openness. While reviewing stakeholder performance these points should be considered.  

The stakeholders should be directly communicated to determine their communication need. A set of question should be prepared that will be asked to them. The information gathered from stakeholder will help to understand their communication needs. Feedback methods and surveys might also be beneficial. 

The increasing number of conflicts between various stakeholders can be a measure to identify communication issues. The conflicts might take place due to communication gap between them of due to low job satisfaction (Schwalbe 2015). The problem can be addressed by holding counselling sessions for various stakeholders. Workshops and management training might also be helpful.  

The internal stakeholders of a project are defined as persons who are directly involved in funding, resourcing and co-ordinating the project for example, project managers, project team members and board of directors. They need information about the resources and status of the project. The external stakeholders of a project are the persons who contribute experience and views to the project (Jeston 2014). Example of external stakeholders are project sponsors and customers. The information that are needed by external stakeholders are budget of the project, total time required for completion of the project and so on.   

Identifying and Addressing Conflicts within a Project

The resources used in the project are an important information need for stakeholders as the budget of the project can be determined. The status or progress of the project is another information need of the stakeholders that give them information about the functioning of the project.   

The components that make up typical project information system are the four various project reports that include status report, resource report, executive report and risk report (Verzuh 2015). Additionally, information of each stakeholder involved in the project, details of project managers, cost of each resource, and budget of the project make up the components of a typical information system.   

The integrity of the information stored in a typical project information system can be ensured by encrypting data, providing secured lock cabinets for storing them. If the data is stored digitally then, servers should be password protected in such a way that access is limited.

Some typical reports produced from a project information system

There are four types of reports that are produced by project managers. They are risk reports, status reports, board or executive report and resource report. These reports are necessary to communicate information related to the project to various stakeholders.

A typical reporting schedule for the above reports

Resource report should be made first followed by status report, risk report and board or executive report.

Resource report will communicate resources used in the project to various stakeholders. The status report will provide information about the progress of the project to various stakeholders of the project (Leach 2014). Risk report communicates the risks that are involved in the project such that necessary measures can be taken. Board report provides information about the project as a whole to the board of directors.

The stakeholders that receive the above mentioned reports are project sponsors, project managers, project executives and board of directors.

Project team members have the responsibility of reporting resource report to project managers. The status reports are also reported by the project team members to project managers and project sponsors. Team members and project managers have the responsibility of producing board report to the board of directors.  

How feedback of reports would be encouraged and then disseminated

Feedback for reports can be encouraged by implementing surveys, usability test and feedback boxes. After collecting the feedbacks, the process of survey can be closed. The stakeholders can even reach out directly to the team members for getting feedback.

Describe how and where project information would be stored on project completion

The project information can be either stored in paper records or digital records. Information and data are stored securely in the form of reports prepared by the project team members. They can be stored in locked cabinets which can only be accessed by high authorities. Another method of storing project information are digital records where data collected are stored electronically in data servers. The servers are secured by strong passwords that are known only by key stakeholders. 

The reporting methods experience some shortfalls that are related to security and safety of project information. Paper records has the disadvantage of being stolen. The locked cabinets where project reports are stored can be broken and sensitive project data can be accessed by unknown users (Turner 2016). This method is now obsolete due to advancements in technology. While recording project information digitally in servers, information or data is encrypted. However, hackers are able to crack passwords and gain access to important information. 

The process that can be used to ensure lessons learned from a project is conducting surveys and feedbacks. The project members should be interviewed who were actively involved in the project. They would better inform about the improvisation that is needed in future projects. Surveys can also be helpful in ensuring about learned lessons. 

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