12 June 2009

Print

Insights from Inside Project Management Journal ^®
A Case for Integrating Project Planning and Team Building

It is the project team that implements a project plan—so organizations should engage teams early in developing the plan, to give members a sense of ownership and a broader view of the project, and to allow the team to develop in full alignment with the plan.

Most project managers agree that successful projects require both a well-developed project plan and a committed project team.

Often, however, organizations treat project planning and project team development as though they were separate from, or even opposite to, each other. Planning is seen as a hard technical skill while team development is regarded as a soft science or skill without clear guidelines. The planning process, then, often proceeds with little involvement of the team that will be expected to implement it.

Four project management experts have attempted to address this contradiction. Their research suggests that planning and implementation are so interdependent that they must be approached in an integrated way.

The article, in the December 2008 issue of the Project Management Journal^®, is entitled “Developing an Effective Project: Planning and Team Building Combined,” by Michael Thomas, PhD, Paul H. Jacques, PhD, John R. Adams, PhD, and Julie Kihneman-Wooten, MPM, PMP—all of Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, North Carolina, USA.

Study Finding: Integrate Project Planning and Team Building

The authors conducted research across 137 organizations. Their results showed that team development must support project planning, and that the planning process must support the development of an effective, committed team.

Study highlights and conclusions include the following:

• Project success is significantly related to both project planning and team-building efforts.
• Engaging teams early on, in the project initiating and planning processes, clearly supports improved project success.
• Organizations that promote team-building activities or team-based project ownership also give teams full input during the project planning process.

Example of Interaction of Team Building and Planning

The authors present one example of a way for team building to interact with project planning, which could be part of a strategy to integrate these processes. Referring to a well-known framework for team development (Whetten & Cameron, 2005), the authors identify some specific opportunities during the stages of team development to engage the team in aspects of planning:

• In the early stage of team building — when the project manager is establishing a sense of direction, clarity and mutual respect, and team members are getting acquainted — there’s an opportunity to communicate and discuss the project’s purposes, boundaries, objectives and constraints.
• In the second stage, when team roles are being established, the project manager can foster team understanding of and commitment to the vision of the project itself.
• In the intermediate stage, when conflicts and disagreements sometimes appear, the manager can focus on making project process improvements by promoting better team relationships and rewarding team achievements.
• In the mature stages, when the emphasis is on performance, managers can focus on team members’ new ideas and the ways to implement them, incorporating them into the plan to contribute to better project outcomes.

Conclusions

The authors stress that team members are most committed to implementing a plan when they’ve had an opportunity to participate in developing that plan. They assert that the plan should not be developed just by the project manager or a separate planning body. Instead, they conclude that the project team and the project plan should be developed in a single, integrated process.

For more on the connection between team building, project planning and project success, see the full article in the Project Management Journal.

PMI’s Project Management Journal is a peer-reviewed journal “dedicated to advancing the understanding of project, program, and portfolio management through empirical investigation and theoretical research.”

PMI members may access the full text of the article when they log in as members to PMI.org and go to Resources > Publications.

To submit a manuscript, please refer to PMJ Submission Guidelines and send to PMJournal@pmi.org.