How To Create Effective and Successful Project Team

Success of project depend mainly two factors (1) Team and (2) Decision making process. 

In this post, I will discuss how to form a project team for project success.

After completing more than 100 projects of various sizes, I found a team must have people having following skills:-

1. Persons having multidisciplinary skills. My common example will be duck from animal kingdom because it swims, it walks and it flies.  It is not excellent in any of them, but it can do all. 

People having multidisciplinary skill can manage the situation as long as they get a proper direction. They can make impact. Project manager need to recognize their incremental contribution in the program.

These people can fit to organization processes and policies. These people normally participates implementing phase reviews, performance metrics, and project steering committees to creating risk management dashboards.

2. Need few experts who are can generate disruptive idea to break any log jam situation. They can help you to lead. I will give examples of spine-tailed-swift and cheetah from animal kingdom as they are the fastest flier and runner. These people have the native skill to come out of business as usual mentality.

For a large complex project, normally there are several stakeholders and managing the expectations of stakeholder is a key to success. Team requires a smooth talker "speaking person" whose job is to manage the expectations of these stakeholders. His job is to pull everybody together and create a positive environment.

You also require an experienced "techie" who can solve the problem and find a quick solution to complex issue. This person normally gives time and cost effective solution. As they often challenge the "business as usual" mentality with their "blue ocean strategy", they might not be the most lovable person but a must have for the success of the project because they are actually innovator.

I strongly believe a small team is a key to success because crowd creates mainly noise. I know modern management speaks about “team work” but you will never find a statue of team in a park. This means at the core of our heart we always recognize the contribution of single person. Democracy seldom fails in project execution.

To drive performance, organizations must engage their employees. I think working in a small engaged team and taking a quick decision is key to success of Apple according to Ken Seagall. This approach helped Apple to avoid "innovator's dilemma".
 
Success of a company depends on how they manage the project. Hence, forming a team is very important and need to be done with due sincerity.