Essentials of managing a project team

Olga Maiorova2014

What is a team?

• Group of individuals, with different personalities, backgrounds, skill levels, needs and motivations

• Same goals• Dependence

Manage project team

• Process of tracking team member performance

• Providing feedback• Resolving issues• Managing changes to optimize project

performance

Management

• Challenging• Leader/champion• Cross-functional

1:1

• To function as the team champion, the manager has to learn about each team member

• Arranging of one-on-one meetings• Weekly or biweekly

1:1

• Regular one-on-ones help to see system problems

• Easier to understand the business – not the strategy, but how the teams build the products to implement the strategy

Feedback

• Providing feedback is a necessary part of management

• As close to the event as possible• In private• Describing the behavior or result• No labels!

Meta-

Managers provide team members• meta-feedback = feedback about how to give

feedback and• meta-coaching = coaching about how to coach

Private problems

• One-on-ones to manage private issues• Responsibilities outside of work• Everyone needs private time with a

responsible manager• Prevention of possible conflicts within a team

Career development

• Feedback about strengths• Manager as a mentor• Suggestion on different responsibilities• Helps people manage their careers and

increases people’s capabilities, thereby increasing organizational capacity.

Motivation

• Project’s benefits• Potential benefits for each project team

member• New skills, new contacts, new career

perspectives• Intermediate milestones

Conflicts

• Challenging but not necessarily bad• Can lead to new ideas and approaches• Listen, acknowledge, respond, resolve

differences• Managing well – conflict as a tool to generate

revitalized team engagement and innovation

Rewarding

• Effort and attainment to achieve desired results

• Recognition and appreciation

Conclusion

• Managing a team could be quite an issue and a project in and of itself

• It is about creating an evironment in which everyone can do their best work

Thank you!