Transcript Chapter 1: The Nature of Information Technology Projects

The Human Side of
Project Management
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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 (intrinsic and extrinsic)
– influence and power
– effectiveness
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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
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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
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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
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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
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
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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
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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 include
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Coercive
Legitimate
Expert
Reward
Referent
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Improving Effectiveness - Covey’s 7
Habits
• Project managers can apply Covey’s 7 habits
to improve effectiveness on projects
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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
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Communications Problems
• Example
– There are three channels of communication
between 3 programmers working on project. The
deadline is rapidly approaching but the code is
not nearly complete
• “Obvious” solution:
– Add a fourth programmer
to the team
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Communications Problems (contd)
• But other three have to explain in detail
– What has been accomplished
– What is still incomplete
• Brooks’s Law
– Adding additional programming personnel to a team
when product is late has the effect of making the
product even later
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Coordination Techniques
• Formal, Impersonal
approaches
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project documents
deliverables
memos
change requests
project schedules
data dictionaries
error tracking procedures
• Formal, Interpersonal
approaches
– status review meetings
– design review meetings
– code inspections
• Informal, Interpersonal
approaches
– group meetings for
information dissemination
and problem solving
• E-communication
– E-mail
– E-bulletin boards
– Web sites
• Interpersonal Network
– informal discussion with
those outside the project
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Team Development
• It takes teamwork to successfully complete most
projects
• 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
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Social Styles Profile
• People are perceived as behaving primarily in
one of four zones, based on their assertiveness
and responsiveness:
– Drivers: proactive and task-oriented
• They are firmly rooted in the present, and they strive
for action.
• pushy, severe, tough, dominating, harsh, strongwilled, independent, practical, decisive, and efficient
– Expressives: proactive and people-oriented
• They are future-oriented and use their intuition to
look for fresh perspectives on the world around
them.
• manipulating, excitable, undisciplined, reacting,
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ambitious, stimulating, friendly.
Social Styles Profile (cont’d)
– Analyticals: reactive and task-oriented
• They are past-oriented and strong thinkers.
• critical, indecisive, stuffy, picky, persistent,
serious, expecting and orderly.
– Amiables: reactive and people-oriented
• Their time orientation varies depending on
whom they are with at the time, and they
strongly value relationships
• confirming, unsure, dependent, awkward,
supportive, respectful, willing, agreeable.
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Social Styles
• People on opposite
corners (drivers and
amiables, analyticals
and expressives) may
have difficulties getting
along
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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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General Advice on Teams
• Focus on meeting project objectives and
producing positive results
• Fix the problem instead of blaming people
• Establish regular, effective meetings
• Nurture team members and encourage them
to help each other
• Acknowledge individual and group
accomplishments
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Learning Cycles
• Derived from educator/philosopher John
Dewey (1938)
• Used to describe how people learn (Kolb,
1984; Honey & Mumford, 1994)
• Can be applied to project teams (Jeris, 1997;
Redding, 2000).
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A Learning Cycle
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Learning Cycles and Lessons
Learned
• 4 Phases of learning cycles
– Understand and frame problem
• Create a shared understanding
• What is the problem (or opportunity)?
• What are we trying to do?
• How are we going to do it?
• Starts out being general but becomes more
defined as the project proceeds
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Learning Cycles and Lessons
Learned
• 4 Phases of learning cycles
– Plan
• Teams plan actions to produce learning by
answering
– What don’t we know that we need to know?
– What actions can we take between now & our next
meeting to find out what we need to know?
– How can we verify that what we are assuming is
actually true?
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Team Learning Record
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Learning Cycles and Lessons
Learned
• 4 Phases of learning cycles
– Act
• Key to learning is action!
• What teams do outside of meetings is just as important as
what they do during meetings
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Test assumptions
Experiment
Gather new information
Try out hunches
• Only by acting do teams have the opportunity to learn
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Action Plan for Team Learning
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Learning Cycles and Lessons
Learned
• 4 Phases of learning cycles
– Reflect and Learn
• Focus of team meetings
• Teams need to slow down, reflect on what has
happened, and capture lessons learned
• Must occur
– In a spirit of openness
– Not in a climate of self-protection or criticism
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Assessing Team Learning
Speed
Depth
Breadth
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Assessing Team Learning
• Speed
– Number of learning cycles completed
– The more cycles completed, the more learning that takes
place
• Depth
– Degree to which teams “reframe” their understanding of the
original problem
• Breadth (Impact)
– The impact of the results produced by the team
– Degree to which other projects, functional areas, or the
organization as a whole is influenced
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Team Learning Cycles over the
Project Life Cycle
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The Project Environment
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A place to call home
Technology support
Office supplies
Culture
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Project Team Charter
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The P-CMM Helps Software Organizations
• Characterize the maturity of their workforce
practices
• Guide a program of continuous workforce
development
• Set priorities for immediate actions
• Integrate workforce development with
process improvement
• Establish a culture of software engineering
excellence
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The P-CMM
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The P-CMM
Level 1- The Initial Level
• The performance of workforce activities is
inconsistent.
• The organization provides forms for activities
but offers little guidance or training in
conducting the activities.
• Managers have not been trained in
performing most of their responsibilitiesmanage by previous experience and
personal.
• Staff perform activities with little preparation.
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The P-CMM
Level 2- The Repeatable Level
• To eliminate problems that keep people from
being able to perform their work
responsibilities effectively ant to establish a
foundation of work practices that can be
continuously improved in developing the
workforce. Problems are
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Environmental distractions
Unclear performance objectives
Lack of relevant knowledge or skill
Poor communication
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The P-CMM
Level 3 – The Defined Level
• Begin to adapt its workforce practices to the
specific nature of its business.
• Identify the core competencies required to
perform is business.
• Develop the specific knowledge and skills
that compose these core competencies.
• Identify best practices in its own activities and
tailor them.
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The P-CMM
Level 4 – The Managed Level
• Capitalize on managing its core
competencies as a strategic advantage
• Set quantitative objectives for growth in core
competencies and for alignment of
performance across the individual, team, unit,
and organizational levels.
• Seek to maximize the effectiveness of
applying these competencies by developing
teams that integrate complementary
knowledge and skills.
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The P-CMM
Level 5 – The Optimizing Level
• Improve individual competencies
• Find innovative ways to improve motivation
and capability
• Support individual’s effort toward continuous
development of personal competencies.
• Transfer successful innovations throughout
the organization
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