Introduction to the Project Team

15’ introduction: (Trainer) - (support: slides & video & web)

Description of the activity

→ Ice breaker: Identify your strengths (15 minutes)

Teacher will start the introduction to the module by asking participants to identify what are their strengths (e.g. organizational skills, communication skills, etc.), interests (e.g. financial, communication, environment etc.) and profile. Participants are then asked to work in small groups and try to identify how they could share responsibilities. The initial brainstorming will then inform the next sessions.

45’ duration: (Trainer) - (support: slides & video & web)

→ The project team

A project team is a group of people working together in collaboration or cooperation towards a common goal. For teams to be effective it is important that team members are understood as individuals in terms of their capabilities, their preferences, their cultural norms and expectations as well as the social dynamics between team members. Teams are increasingly international, with individuals who bring diverse skill-sets and perspectives, and can be located across countries and continents. National cultures are influential in shaping behaviours in project-based working. The project professional has an opportunity to improve outcomes by harnessing diversity and inclusion from the people available.

→ The team roles

Proper project team organization is one of the key constraints to project success. If the project has no productive and well-organized team, there’s an increased probability that this project will be failed at the very beginning because initially the team is unable to do the project in the right manner. Without right organization of teamwork, people who form the team will fail with performing a number of specific roles and carrying out a variety of group/individual responsibilities. Hence, when you plan for a new project, first you must take care of the best project team organization through team building activities.

Every team, regardless of the project type, size and nature, has three roles (defined as “conventional”). These roles are:

• Project manager: a team leader is a person who provides leadership and guidance to the team and takes responsibility for the results of teamwork.

• Member: a project team member is a person who is actually involved in doing assigned tasks. Team members directly access the project and actively evolve its processes.

• Contributor: a project team contributor is a person or an organization that participates in teamwork but is not actually involved in performing tasks and carrying out project team responsibilities. Contributors help improve the project through giving valued suggestions, expert judgment and consultation. They aren’t responsible for the project results. Often project team contributors have an interest or concern in the project, so they facilitate successful completion.

For the scope of the OUTSIDE methodology, we defined 4 basic roles each OUTSIDE green project should have:

• Project manager: the person responsible for coordinating the team, monitoring the implementation and the timeline, facilitating the workflow within the team, harmonize the decision-making process

• Financial officer: the person in charge of leading the budget design, monitoring expenses and reporting them to the team

• Communication officer: the person in charge of the communication with internal and external stakeholders and responsible for conveying the environmental value of the project to the public

• Marketing specialist: the member in charge of defining marketing tools, channels and strategies for promoting the project to the public.

Here’s a small checklist of the key tasks for creating a project team organizational chart:

• Make a Project Team List. First you need to list all the people (and theirs names) who are supposed to be the participants of your project team. You can do this after you’ve finished interviews with candidates to the team.

• Allocate the basic roles. Now you must think about what individuals will take what roles. Use the results of your interviews to start with leaders, then list members and contributors.

• Identify additional roles. Analyse your project and define whether you need specific roles (ex. IT specialist)

• Assemble the Whole Team. Use your team list with the details on the roles assigned to your people to assemble the team. This means you need to formally constitute the team.

• Identify the Stakeholders. Your team if formed, now you need to identify the stakeholders or those people/organizations having a direct interest in or affected by your project. They are the sponsor and the customer. Note that although the stakeholders are not participants of the team, they’re added to the project team organizational plan because they influence decisions of the team.

• Build the chart. Finally use all the data to create the chart and display relationships between the team and stakeholders on it. The relationships will show who is reporting to whom and what supervisory mechanism is used for leading teamwork.

After having introduced the concept of project team and roles, the trainer asks the teams to start brainstorming about sharing responsibilities. To what extent the project roles identify match with the strengths and interests introduced during the ice-breaking activity?