According to Gallup, not more than 2.5 percent of companies succeed in completing all their projects. Businesses usually owe their failures to the inconsistent project management, which is commonly a result of managerial incompetence. Hence, assembling the right PM team is a vitally important decision for managers to make.
Inadequate staff members, imprecise communication, and poorly defined project goals are only some of the potential causes of the team inefficiency. If you want to avoid these problems and create a powerful PM team that you can rely on, read on and pay attention to the tips that we present below.
The most important steps to make when creating a perfect PM team
The creation of an efficient and responsible PM team is a complex process which should include four main steps:
- The selection of the members,
- The formulation of the ground rules,
- The clarification of the goals set,
- Constant team building.
Read on and get to know the crucial tips you should adopt when going through these four steps.
1. The selection of the members
Tip: Choose professional and reliable people.
Finding the perfect match in the pile of applications can be an overwhelming and painstaking process. Make sure you are doing it the right way by primarily choosing people based on the needs of your company. Do not waste your time on admiring the candidates’ impressive certifications that may never be required.
If you have already hired an expert in a specific area, do not hire another one with the same qualifications. Instead, consider employing professionals with different backgrounds to provide diverse skill sets and perspectives to the team. In addition, pay attention to each candidate’s traits, particularly the willingness to work selflessly as a part of the team.
Finally, once you have selected all of the members, you should have a reliable group of people capable of effectively dealing with all project management tasks.
2. The formulation of the ground rules
Tip: Introduce the ground rules in a precise and unambiguous manner.
Make sure to inform all of the team members about the basic rules they should respect while working together. This should happen as soon as you gather them, in order to prevent misunderstandings and conflicts that may appear later.
The ideal way of communicating all of your expectations and rules is to do so during the first meeting for the project. This way, each team member will know what his or her duties and tasks are from the very beginning. After this initial meeting, they all should be able to:
- Recognize the areas of their responsibility
- Identify the team members they should reach out to in case of a specific problem
3. The clarification of the goals being set
Tip: Communicate goals and priorities in a way that will initiate an increase in motivation
If you are not capable of presenting goals and priorities to the PM team in a way they will understand, you may have a serious issue. When communicating the mentioned information, you should do it in two different ways:
- Present the goals to each member of the team
To create an efficient PM team, every person should stick to a specific goal and work on it until the results become visible. When you delegate the tasks to the team member, you should emphasize the importance of the role of every single person. Make sure to delegate the duties clearly and precisely to avoid conflicts and misunderstandings.
- Present the goals to the team as a unit
The people working in your PM team should be able to think like one. So, to achieve this, you should refer to them as one. Present and explain the goals the team should reach as if you were explaining them to a single person. Once you provide them with a wider picture, you will motivate them to act united, thereby increasing their group motivation and the team spirit.
4. Constant team building
Tip: Make your team members feel like a team even when they are not in the office
To make your team be efficient and provide you with great results, you should make sure they have a regular professional communication. The team whose members don’t communicate is not a team, which is why it is essential to invest in team building.
If you succeed in making the PM team members get along outside the working hours, you’ll definitely increase the quality of their professional interaction, too – they will not feel shy, insecure, or restrained when discussing tasks and issues. In addition, regular team building activities are an ideal way of showing them that they should collaborate rather than compete. Some of the most popular and efficient activities of this kind are the ones based on creative problem solving and collaboration, such as room escape and office trivia.
Build your dream PM team now
If you are a manager looking forward to creating an efficient PM team, you should have in mind the potential members’ professional backgrounds and skillsets as well as their capability of sharing the team spirit. Presenting the ideas, goals, and detailed tasks delegation is another important part of this process.
Finally, you should know that the creation of an ideal PM team is not something done in a week or a year. The efficiency is a characteristic that should be nurtured as long as the team exists. You can do it by utilizing open-minded and precise communication, as well as comprehensive project management tools that make it easier to communicate and organize information and activities effortlessly.
