Ch10 Building A High-Performance Project Team

People who work on the project team would work together in harmony to build plans, manage risk, perform tasks, and commit themselves to achieving the clearly started goals of the project. They also will be temporary, formed specifically for the purpose of achieving the goals, after which they will disband. There is a framework for building high-performance teams. There are three major parts in this framework.

Leadership Responsibilities: It is the key stone.

1. Attending to the health of the team.

2. Maintaining the strategic vision.

3. Attending to the team members.

4. Exhibiting and demanding accountabilities.

5. Personal Energy that inspires the team through example.

“Leadership is difficult to define but critical to project success.” – By Eric Verzub.

Without leadership the other components of the framework are drastically diminished.


Building a Positive Team Environment:

1. Meeting management: A meeting needs to begin with goals and a plan, and it must be actively steered toward the goals

2. Listening skills: Exchange ideas.

3. Team identity: Built on commitment to shared goal.

4. Ground rules: it describes the work patterns and values of the team. Ground rule provide a way for the team’s leader to gain agreement on expected behavior, and they serve as a tool for reminding people of what behavior is expected.

Collaborative Problem Solving

1. Continuous learning

2. Conflict management: Mature teams accept and value the inevitability of conflict and achieve the best decision to strength the stronger team relationship.

3. Decision modes

4. Problem analysis

The project team takes the project from point A to point B spraining the distance just as a bridge spans from one point to another. An arch strengthens the bridge span. The high-performance team arch strengthens the team. The leader is the keystone because the leader ties the team together.

Chapter 11 CLEAR COMMUNICATION

To be a Project Manager, communication will occur in many forms, with many individuals, including project stakeholders, your internal team, management within your organization, vendors, and more. Communication may pass through verbally or e-mail, as well as charters and project plans, addenda and status reports. These long lists are a small indication of the significance of communication to a Project Manager. There are some simple ways to maintain clear and constant communication efficiently with all parties involved.

1. Plan ahead to info people

Your project plan should include an outline for an ongoing contact strategy, meaning how you will communicate with your team and client, how often and in what form. This could be presented through a simple chart explaining that there will be a weekly status call from you to the client each Monday morning with written action items as a follow-up. Regardless of the details, the point is to set-up expectations by describing your intent before the project commences. This will allow the team and the clients to request a different approach if they feel it would be more effective. People feel confident when they understand what to expect.

2. Repeating –Keeping tracking issues

When decisions or direction is provided verbally, whether it's to your team or your client, always restate these items in writing. The minute details of a project are numerous, what may seem understood today may be forgotten tomorrow. Never take this for granted - do your due diligence by recording and distributing actionable items and decisions for the team. A simple e-mail will often suffice, and having a paper trail of a critical path can prove invaluable when important details get lost in the shuffle.

3. Focus on the main point

Project Managers need to be able to speak well, lead meeting effectively, and resolve conflicts constructively. In addition, they need to listen well, so they can really understand what is being said and get into the point.

As project team members need to have four major communication needs: responsibility, coordination, status and authorization. If all the team members have these four needs and project manager also gave the clear direction. It will be easier and smoother to process all the projects.

We need “Communication” on our daily basis. If we make sure we check our message clearly, provide sufficient context, and make the expectations for any outcome apparent. As with most critical PM skills, communication is something that can be improved continuously.

BUS520 Organization Behavior -Reflection

1. Think of a time when, as a direct result of something a leader said or did, you felt personally powerful and capable.

I am the backup opening school person. When the primary opening staff is absent, I will take over the job duty. One day, this stuff was absent and my directress didn’t remind to me she won’t be there. Fortune, I saw bulletin board and reminded myself. Therefore, I went to earlier next day to open the school. Half hour later, my directress called and she heard my voice. She used her over joy voice to answer me. How appreciated she was and how worried she was. And she also said “I knew I always can count on you and you made my day.” After I heard what she said, suddenly I felt I got recognized my hard working by my directress. The happiness was inside of me for the rest of the week at least.

2. Now think of a time when you felt powerless, weak, and insignificant as a result of something a leader said or did.

It happened today when we had a staff absent. All teachers works as a team and tried to relief office work, teachers took turn and took their breaks. When I saw our new office manager sat down and was looking for a work to do and the directress was there as well. So I suggested our directress to ask a favor from the new office manger to come in and help other classroom until teacher’s break is over if it is possible. Well, the directress went out and discusses the young and new manager, then replied to me “Just ask S teacher do not take her break until later.” So all other teachers stop to break each other and continue to work. Somehow, this directress went to tell S teacher not to take early break and said that “because “I” do not want her to take break”. Since I am a good friend of S teacher, therefore, S teacher was very mad at me and she thought I talked bad thing behind her to the directress instead of told to her directly. I didn’t know anything until Y teacher share with me. After lot of explanations among S teacher, the directress and I, we figured out the message from the directress to S teacher was miscommunicated. She apologized to both of us and sent a sorry card to us to end this story.

For the moment of me was surprised and disappointed what happened. I should learn that a simple miscommunication without careful consideration can cause a big issue. It gave the warning sign to all of us to think ahead, plan ahead before you do or say anything. Sometime, one word can change one world.

BUS528 - Chapter 7 Ideas

Chapter 7 “Realistic scheduling”


Layout a detailed plan may not solve all the problems you will face as a project manager, but it does provide a tool set for solving many of them. Those planning techniques are the entry point to the science of project management without them it’s impossible to practice the art.

There are five steps in “Realistic Scheduling”.

1. Planning overview

2. Identify Task Relationships

3. Estimate work Package

4. Calculate an Initial Schedule

5. Assign and level Resources

The base for all project progress and status is the project plan. To build a well plan project is a key factor for estimating the project's progress and overall success. The closer the project plan is to reality, the more successful it's likely to be. A realistic schedule takes into consideration all the objectives of the project. Those steps mentioned above generate all information required to understand how a project will be executed. They are step by step instructions, but they don’t necessarily come up with the correct answers. It might take several steps to find the answer,that is the optimal balance between cost, schedule and quality.

BUS528 Chapter 8 Ideas -Week5

Chapter 8 “The Art and Science of Accurate Estimating”


There are four elements in accurate estimating a project. First step is estimating the fundamentals of the project. Then, estimating techniques that the project need to apply. Afterward, building the detailed budget estimate to calculate how much budget need in this project. The last step is generating the cash flow schedule.

In this chapter, I learned three estimating techniques: apportioning, parametric estimates, and bottom-up estimating. Apportioning (top-down estimating) begins with a total project estimate, then, assigns a percentage at that total to each of the phases and tasks of the project. Parametric Estimates that seeks a basic unit of work to act as a multiplier to size the entire project. Bottom-up estimating requires the most effort, but it is also the most accurate. All the detailed tasks are estimated and then combined, or “rolled up”. Everyone (customer, management, project manager, and team) is better served when a cost target is realistically calculated from a detailed plan.

BUS 528 Assignment Chapter 9

Week 5-Chapter 9 ideas

After I read the introduction, I learned about “Whatever we do, we need to face with limited time, limited money and a shortage of the people, equipment, and materials we need to complete our job.”By all means, no matter how efficient people may be, project manager must realize their limits and make choice.

There are many ways to balance projects. There are 8 ways mentioned in chapter 9:1. Re-estimate the project. 2. Change task assignment to take advantage of schedule float. 3. Add people to the project. 4. Increase productivity by using experts from within the firm. 5. Increase productivity by using experts from outside of the firm. 6. Outsourcing the entire project or a significant portion of it. 7. Crashing the schedule. 8. Working overtime.

I preferred to use “Working overtime” method. Only people who work for the project understand how things go in this project. If add people to the project , in my opinion, project manager need more time to explain and the new persons need more time to get to know the entire project – cost more time and more money. Or, increasing productivity by using experts from within the firm that will this team deliver the best possible schedule performance and it will also be cost-effective.