Teamwork Skills and Project Management

1. Teamwork Skills and Project Management 1. Teamwork Skills

2. Teamwork • Corporations develop teams for many reasons • Projects are becoming increasingly complex • Projects often span international borders, and require workers all over the world • Projects are requiring more speed, which requires more workers

3. What Makes a SuccessfulTeam? • A common goal • Leadership • Each member makes unique contributions • Effective communication • Creativity • Good planning and use of resources

4. Team Leadership Structures • Traditional: One leader, who directs subordinates. Leader typically is the only one who “speaks”. • Participative: Leader is closer to individual workers. • Flat: There is no “leader”. All members are equal. The leadership “moves” with the situation to the worker with the most expertise in a given subject

5. Decisions within a Team • Consensus: All team members agree on a decision • Majority Rule • Minority/Committee decision • Expert input

6. Grading a Team Effort • Did the team accomplish its goal? • Were results of a high quality? If not, why? • Did the team grow throughout the process? • Evaluate the team leader • Evaluate the other members of the team • Evaluate your own contribution to the project

7. Teamwork Skills and Project Management 2. Project Management

8. Introduction • “Failure to plan is planning to fail.” • A good plan is one of the most important attributes of successful teams and projects. • Projects should be organized systematically.

9. Eight Questions that can be Addressed with a Plan • What to do first? • Next? • How many people? • What resources? • How long? • Time table? • Deadlines? • Objectives?

10. Creating a Project Charter • A project summary • Defining what your project is and when you will know when it is done • Elements include • Deliverables • Duration • Stakeholders • Team members

11. Task Definitions • Identify the completion tasks to achieve the objectives and outcomes • Plan • Design • Build • Deliver

12. Plans • Plans should include: • Who to hold accountable for progress • Needed materials, resources, etc. • How to determine if the project is on schedule • Manage people and resources • Determine the end!

13. Milestones • Monitoring of your plans progress • Deadlines for deliverables • Completion of subcomponents • Used to track progress and meeting milestones can be a big morale boost for team. • Doesn’t have to be an individual activity with time and resources, etc.

14. Milestones • Milestones are significant events on a project that normally have zero duration • You can follow the SMART criteria in developing milestones that are: • Specific • Measurable • Assignable • Realistic • Time-framed

15. Defining Times • Include the full time needed for tasks • As a student, you don’t have a full eight-hour work day every day • Break tasks into week segments • Weekday and/or weekend • Class periods • Break tasks into short time periods • No more than a week or two

16. Organizing the Tasks • Determine task relationships and sequencing • Relate the task groups from your outline

17. PERT Charts and Network Diagrams • Developed by the US Navy back in the 50’s when working on Polaris missile project. • Each task is represented by a box containing a brief description of and duration for the task • The boxes can be laid out just as the project plan is laid out • Useful as a “what if” tool during planning stages • Lines to and from boxes showed task relationships. • Generally simplify into Network Diagrams since PERT actually uses weighted time estimates.

18. Precedence or Network Diagram

19. Task Dependency Types

20. Critical Paths • The longest string of dependant project tasks • Ex. – prerequisites such as the math curriculum for engineering • Some tasks can be accelerated by using more people, others cannot • Ex. – nine people cannot have the same baby in one month

21. Critical Path Method (CPM) • CPM is a project network analysis technique used to predict total project duration • A critical path for a project is the series of activities that determines the earliest time by which the project can be completed • The critical path is the longest path through the network diagram and has the least amount of slack or float

22. Finding the Critical Path • First develop a good project network diagram • Add the durations for all activities on each path through the project network diagram • The longest path is the critical path

23. Simple Example of Determining the Critical Path • Consider the following project network diagram. Assume all times are in days. a. How many paths are on this network diagram? b. How long is each path? c. Which is the critical path? d. What is the shortest amount of time needed to complete this project?

24. Figure 6-8. Determining the Critical Path for Project X

25. More on the Critical Path • If one or more activities on the critical path takes longer than planned, the whole project schedule will slip unless corrective action is taken • Misconceptions: • There can be more than one critical path if the lengths of two or more paths are the same • The critical path can change as the project progresses

26. Using Critical Path Analysis to Make Schedule Trade-offs • Knowing the critical path helps you make schedule trade-offs • Free slack or free float is the amount of time an activity can be delayed without delaying the early start of any immediately following activities • Total slack or total float is the amount of time an activity may be delayed from its early start without delaying the planned project finish date • A forward pass through the network diagram determines the early start and finish dates • A backward pass determines the late start and finish dates

27. Calculating Early and Late Start and Finish Dates

28. Gantt Charts • Popular project management charting method • Horizontal bar chart • Tasks vs. dates

29. Gantt Charts

30. Gantt Chart

31. Sample Tracking Gantt Chart

32. Details, Details • Remember Murphy’s Law - “Anything that can go wrong, will.” • Leave time to fix debug or fix errors

33. Details, Details • Don’t assume things will fit together the first time • Order parts well in advance to leave time for shipping, errors, or backorders • Leave time for parts malfunction • Push delivery times back to a week before they’re actually due – this will help to avoid panic if things go badly

34. Personnel Distribution • Get the right people on the right tasks • Assign people after developing a draft of the plan • Balance the work between everyone • Weekly updates – does everyone understand what they’re doing and is everyone still on task?

35. Money and Resources • Develop a budget • Estimate with high, middle, and lower quality products – offer a range of solutions • Extra costs • Shipping • Travel • Extra parts such as nails, screws, resistors • Material costs and labor • Have someone be responsible for managing the budgets and financial aspects

36. Document As You Go • Document milestones as they occur • Leave time at the end for reviewing, not writing

37. Team Roles • Roles • Project Leader or Monitor • Procurement • Financial Officer • Liaison • Project Management Software

38. Project Leader or Monitor • Designate a leader, or rotate leaders • Monitor and track progress of milestones • Maintains timelines • Increases likelihood of meeting goals

39. Procurement • Learns purchasing system • Tracks team orders

40. Financial Officer • Manages teams expenses • Creates original budget • Makes identifying budgetary problems easier

41. Liaison • Responsible for keeping everyone informed about the progress of the plan and any changes • This includes outside customers, management, professors, etc.