Team formation and team management for short term and medium projects

With open and effective communication, trust manifests between the team leader and teammates spurring significant conflict management and unity that leads to success within the set time. With consideration that change in the contemporary world happens so fast and it is ever happening, people need to understand that incorporation of current and trendy issues of project management in daily operations is as good as adoption of technology to ease organizational and teamwork project management. Most organizational spending occurs through projects, which prompts track keeping through good tools and great management. The paper explains that small projects and medium sized ones need attention because they might pave way for big and major projects. Change adopted in management of a team undertaking any form of these projects should be undertaken carefully.

Carefully run, these SMPs are significant as they lead to the end product. However, management can fail or be unable to predict the success rate of downstream projects at the initial stages. Often times, projects are meant to have value at the end. It is essential that a project manager and the team members identify the value of a project and work towards realizing this outcome. In small projects the problems are not grave and can easily be amended to make the desired outcome attainable. In this sense, best practices for a planned SMP are a significant portion and any veering away from these best practices causes failure of the entire planned project. This critical ingredient prompts the project managers to focus on the elaborate and conventional project recipes that in most cases are unique for each planned small or medium-sized project.

Project team management and team formation for Small and Medium-Sized Projects (MSPs) is not the solution for each arising problem or to every small improvement in the company’s or organization’s planned projects. Besides, SMPs can enhance dilution of an organization’s leading expertise. It happens because project managers will coach their team to concentrate on delivering the project goals as oppose or at the expense of developing new knowledge. On the other hand, horizontal communication aids in creative processes facilitation, coordination and implementation of events, and activation or utilization of organizational knowledge assets. The book fronts that communication skills are the basis for organizational success and should be a basic requirement and possession for all employees. Ideally, the material establishes that formal and informal communication determines the efficiency of an organization and subsequently success of the SMPs run by such organizations.

However, it is prudent to recognize that unless the employees have a security guarantee information flow through communication will be ineffective. In a hostile climate, employees will seek to protect themselves by avoiding dissemination of information to ensure that is otherwise important in establishing the successes and failures of any SMP. The book suggests that communication should be continuous (not broken by any internal or external challenges faced by team members of a project) and not necessarily without any loopholes. Here the material is suggesting that the team managers can fall apart at times because of many reasons or team members in a formed team might fail to agree in everything. Nonetheless, these issues should never bring any misunderstanding between them to an extent of tearing them apart and causing divisions that might threaten or eventually cause failure of a team in totality meaning it will not attain its objectives or it will fail at the end of the day.

The seminal paper will in this case seek to know how or to what level meaningful communication should be in an organization and the influence of understanding team members’ emotions to launch a proper motivation that keeps them going. Justification of the Author’s Interest in the Topic The current societal and organizational set-up have different ways of attaining different goals, but the use of projects according to the book is becoming the most commonly used approach. The team leader should be a coach that pulls and introduces the members to the objectives of their team as early as possible as communicated by the organization’s management. The project manager should seek to ensure that Core Team members are introduced into the work of the project quite early regardless of the purpose and objectives of the project being somewhat unclear at the start.

One could suggest that the claim made by the writer at this point is that these Core Members’ presence would be advantageous in various ways. They can be the ones to suggest ways to improve the objectives of the project. They can also work together with the team leaders to establish the right ways to conduct and undertake the project in a stepwise approach to ensure non-collusion at all project stages. The role of the project user or customer and iii. The role of the project owner or principal Small and medium-sized projects take short to completion and their budget is constratined; issues that compel that roles should be definite or well-outlined. It all begins with an understanding vested in the project manager’s mind on the origin or background of the members of the team, their experiences and skills from the past positions held, and their knowledge in the new project.

One could wonder how these roles would be defined and how a change a mid the project will influence the project outcomes. The knowledge is most significantly needed in the selection of Core Team members. The best practice in this case should be that the individual team leader has their say, but the views as vetted and the best members that are competent are selected to ensure that the team is comprised of a technical team that offers sufficient technical support helpful towards project success. In a case where members are a preference of the team manager, it is possible for incompetent leaders to form the Core Team members, which in return will compromise the outcome of the group in the long-run.

Besides, Jessen opines that too much similarity and the „buddy“ effect caused by too much acquitance results in scarcity of different opinions and siggestions meant to improve outcomes of the undertaken SMP. However, experts opine that a team leader needs people that they know most to form part of their team. It is significant working with such people because they are the most preferred by the leader and such selection approach gives the leader an opportunity to influence the selection. In most cases, the Core Team members are the experienced and skilled individuals. In most cases, the old and experienced are the ones willing to take risk in project management and project performance, because risk taking falls with age. Women are moderators and can offer an integrating effect on aggressive teams.

However, the same women can be too cautious and risk averse. On the other hand, men are risk taking even in their middle adulthood, outgoing, and aggressive. These are people affected directly by the outcomes of the project. The usefullness of the outcomes of SMPs determine the customer’s take on the success of the undertaken and concluded project. In most cases, SMPs and other projects are interconnected in organizations or they have close association that make it hard to identify the intended user. However, for SMPs it is significant to make precision on the intended user so that the user becomes the center of focus to ensure that they derive satisfaction at the end of the project process. Ideally, all purposes and project objectives should put the user in mind because if the user is dissatisfied, then the project objectives were not in line with the user’s demands or requirements.

The goal or objective a project is the only way to realize the mission or the effect goal of any project that will suit the client or user. To determine the user’s view on the end product of the SMP, user analysis, market analysis, and quality assessment serve as means of widening the goal of the project to ensure that the mission of the same project becomes a reality at the end. Figure 1 To implement a mission as the highest rank of the SMP, a vision or prophecy must exist that the objectives will then pursue with a goal or goals that will lead to the realization of the mission. This mission should then bring forth the success of any SMP as anticipated by the users.

However, before the end result there are strategies, hierarchies, organizations, and plans laid to kick start the project immediately after determination of the objectives and adoption of the terms of references (TORs) significant in realization of the goals and mission. Thirdly, in the goal setting the Core Team members should determine the attitudes to establish the dos and don’ts of the project mission. Moreover, goal setting should clear conflicts and ensure all members work towards a common track to realize success. Finally, any good goal triggers rewards. Reward in this sense implies to the success of a project. At this point, the project’s mission has materialized and everything is practical as anticipated by the team leader, client, owner, and Core Team members.

The implication is that the project leader has full mandate to appoint core team members and to decide within the limits of terms of references and the instructions from higher managers from an organization. The detailed and primary principle in small and medium-sized projects is that detailed plans shall serve as guidelines and not prerequisite (Jessen, 63). Therefore, the writer seeks to show that terms of references and the project goals are closely connected. Terms of references are significant to an organization and together with the project leader and core team members they determine the goal and mission of the business thereby yielding success. These terms of references can, therefore, be projected to corrections by the principals of the project. Communication cannot be 100% perfect without breakdowns.