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9 - PROJECT HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

9.4.2.3 Conflict Management

See Section 9.4.2.3 of the PMBOK Guide.
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9.4.2.4 Interpersonal Skills

See Section 9.4.2.4 of the PMBOK Guide.
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9.4.2.5 Additional Considerations

The following considerations address some additional aspects of managing a software project team.

Tracking performance of individual team members on a software project is a delicate issue. It is important
to assess individual performance, interactions with colleagues, and development of skills. At the same time,
care should be taken to not publicize measured performance at the individual level because many factors affect
individual performance on a software project. For example, a talented project member may exhibit decreased
productivity when working on the most complex part of the product, having been assigned to the difficult part
because of the project member’s skills. In addition, publicizing individual performance can result in self-centered
behavior and provides little reward for collaborating with and helping other team members.

For these reasons, it is desirable to track performance at the team level; team members will have incentives to
help colleagues in order to boost the team’s overall productivity. For this reason, velocity (the production rate per
iteration) is measured at the team level and not at the level of individuals.

Project managers who engage one-on-one with individual team members can learn each member’s career
development goals. Developing individual skills and roles of team members and finding opportunities for them to
use these skills on the project greatly improves individual commitment and satisfaction. Team members become
more aligned and committed to the project goals when they see how their personal goals are linked to project
goals.

Because many software projects work on short iteration cycles, new roles can be tried for an iterative cycle or
two before adopting or abandoning a new role. The opportunity to try new roles is appreciated by team members
as being proactive to their needs without being disruptive to the project.

Periodic intervals for experimentation with new and different team roles is also advantageous to the project
manager who rapidly obtains feedback on self-directed team adjustments. Iterative approaches provide short-time
periods for experimentation and feedback to team members, which most people find to be rewarding.

Feedback is obtained by demonstrating increments of working software after which retrospective team
meetings are held. These two events (demonstrations and retrospectives) provide valuable feedback to the project
team members, project manager, and customer. A demonstration provides feedback on what the customer thinks
of the new work, information is gained on how the project is (or is not) meeting its goals, and retrospectives plus
introspection aids in adjusting and improving the development processes.

174 ©2013 Project Management Institute. Software Extension to the PMBOK Guide Fifth Edition
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