Accents For A Project Manager

PRLog (Press Release) – Any group of people, working together has much in common with any alive organism, which obtains its own special phases and behavior. For a project manager it’s necessary to know peculiarities to be ready to manage a project in the best way. According to Tuckman's Stages of Team Development there are 5 items to proceed: forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning. Every stage is important of course, but the initial phase is the most significant one.

An excellent team is the result of complex work and that is why it’s necessary to make work with people more comfortable for a project manager.

The first step in creating a professional team is the understanding of what kind of people are required for the project. Requests may concern both professional and personal features of people. A manager is also to define the cost of resources. Project team is gathered either from the very beginning and the staff works only in this project; or a project team is selected out of employees, who participate in many projects simultaneously. And it may well be, that at necessary moment the certain employee is occupied with the task in another project. But in case with the common resource pool for many projects, it’s easier to solve the question of resources load and to escape dead-time situations. That is why the communication between project leaders is very important.
It’s much easier nowadays to cope with any number of projects owing to different kinds of project management software. For example, ConceptDraw Project provides opportunities for easy project management as there are enough features to plan and keep track of any number of projects simultaneously owing to multi project workspace. With the help of ConceptDraw Project it's easy to manage resources shared among different projects, as well as create linkages between them. Various projects can be managed from a single workspace. Use of this kind of software lightens communication between project managers as the complete picture of what is done by whom and when is obvious and can be accessed with no efforts.

Getting back to initiation phase, we should say that at this period a project team is concerned with orientation, it identifies the boundaries of both interpersonal and task behaviors. Also relationship with a leader, other group members are established. The beginning of any project makes people anxious. And the task of a project manager is to unite the team and help its members to develop clear relationships within the group. There must be a lot of communication and discussion to form confidence, understanding, sincerity, tolerance, openness and readiness to support each other and move forward.

The next stage is norming, while this period team members adjust their behavior to each other as they agree to make the teamwork harmonious to enjoy working together. Motivation becomes more effective at this stage.

In case the previous stages passed successfully, the stage of performing is the most pleasant for a project manager, because the team is aware about all details and it is aimed completely at the task. It doesn’t need precise control as everybody is at place and knows what to do. And what is great, the team works as a single organism, doing its best, supporting each other, it is aimed at result. And what is great, the team is able to make decisions itself.

The final phase is Adjourning, when all tasks are almost completed. And this is a good time to present new ideas and projects to keep the team from anxiety about future work.

Obviously, all these phases are to be followed by a project manager for the project to be successful. The experience and knowledge of nice decisions will provide the desired result.