The process of acquiring project team is an activity that allows selecting and approving human resource availability according to the list of required skills and criteria for choosing human resource for the purpose of obtaining the team necessary to accomplish project work.
The process is managed by the project management team. The project manager is a person who has an authority to manage the recruiting process and decide on team members. While selecting and deciding on team members, the following acquiring project team criteria should be considered:
- Required level of experience at appropriate projects and activities. The project manager gathers all information about current experience level of team member to compare it with the required experience level.
- Interest level. The project manager defines whether team member is interested in participating in project and why.
- Personal qualifications. By means of interviews and questionnaires, the project manager look at personal skills and talents of team member and measure how this individual team member will work with other project team members.
- Availability. The project manager identifies whether project team member desired for the project is available. The project manager should decide with functional managers on the availability of potential team members.
- Knowledge. The project manager identifies the competency and proficiency of available project team members.
By using the acquiring project team criteria, the project manager and members of the project management team select a method of team acquisition. There are several standard acquiring project team methods, including the following:
- Method of pre-assignments allows selecting team members in advanced, before project starts. The method is used in situations when implementation of project depends on the expertise of specific people who deliver a competitive proposal to project.
- Method of virtual team building is used when the whole project or a significant part of it is to be fulfilled by groups of people who carry out their roles and responsibilities with little or no time spent on face to face communication and collaboration. Virtual teams use electronic means of communication (such as email and video conferencing) to fulfill project tasks. A virtual team environment is based on communication planning so the project manager needs to ensure virtual teams have all required communication tools to participate in project.
- Method of negotiations allows making staff assignments between multiple projects in order to ensure each of the projects has appropriately competent human resources within the required time frame. The method entails development and use of delegation and re-assignment models to make efficient staff assignments considering the benefits and visibility of competing projects.
The team acquisition methods can be used separately or taken together to acquire project team. Project gets staffed when all team members have appropriate assignments. Then the process of acquiring project team comes to an end and generates the following acquiring project team outputs:
- Project staff assignment documentation – includes names of project team members, memos to team members, and a project team directory.
- Work schedules – document team member availability and include time periods that every team member can work on project considering schedule conflicts, such as vacation time and commitments to other projects.
- Updates to the project management plan – concern such elements of the plan as human resource plan and staffing requirements.
Jump to the nest step of the human resource management process:
- Project Team Acquiring
- Project Team Developing
- Project Team Managing