As we know that, effective team do not just happen. They need to be built.
Team development is not as simple as we think. The project manager must have proper project management understandings. Project team members can either make or break the operation of the project. So, with utmost due care, a project team is to be selected. However, despite of such care, some common barriers still lies for development of the team structure of the project.
The common barriers of project team developments are as follows:
- Different overall views, priorities and interest
- Credibility of project leader
- Poor Communication
- Poor selection of team members
- Lack of top management support
- Lack of members commitments
- Team leadership structure
- Project objectives not clear
- Role conflict
- Dynamic project environment
- Others
The above points are explained as follows:
1. Different outlooks, priorities and interest:
The project team cannot develop if the members of the team have different professional overviews, priorities and interests which are different from the project objectives. Therefore, all of them must flow in the direction of the project goal.
2. Credibility of project leader :
Team building efforts are hampered when the project leader suffers from poor credibility within the team or from other managers. The credibility problems can come from :
- poor management skills
- poor technical judgmental skills
- lack of experiences
- that are relevant for the project.
3. Poor Communication:
Poor communication is the enemy of the team building process or team development. Poor communication practices often leads to unclear objectives, poor control and supervision, poor coordination and poor flow of work. Communication breakdown can incur at following levels:
- Among the members of the team
- Between project manager and team member
- Between project team and top management
- Between project manager and customer
4. Poor selection of team members:
This barrier develops when members of the team are not properly selected. In some cases, project team members are assigned by functional managers and the project managers have little or no input into the selection process. Therefore, feeling of being unfairly treated or threatened during staffing of project causes difficulties to frame the project team.
5. Lack of top management support:
Top management support may wax over the project life cycle. Similarly, timely feedback may be missing about performance of the project. Even insufficient attention may be given to create the right project environment.
6. Lack of members commitments:
Team members may lack commitments. The sources of poor commitments by the team members can be:
- Feeling of job insecurity in the project
- Interpersonal conflicts within team
- Unclear nature of reward
- Failure to maintain commitments over the life of project
7. Team leadership structure :
The project may be frequently changed. The team structure may lack an effective reporting and task responsibilities. Therefore, leadership may suffer from poor credibility and finally hamper commitments of the team members.
8. Project objectives not clear :
There may be barrier to the development of project, if the objectives of projects are not clear. Unclear project objectives frequently leads to conflict, ambiguities and power struggles. It becomes difficult to define roles and responsibilities clearly. (for project planning details )
9. Role conflict :
Project team are build to achieve its objective. The team gets authority, responsibility and accountability of the project task. But the individual task of among the team members gets ill defined. This develops role conflicts among team members.
10. Dynamic project environment :
A project has to continually adapt with dynamic project environment (Internal and External Environment). A project is affected by such dynamic environment, the project team development gets affected. Therefore environments are also taken as the barrier of team development
11. Others:
- Competition over team leadership
- Critically of decision and one man show policy
- Lack of team definition and structure
As we know, solution lies within every problems. So, by knowing the exact problem encountered to develop project team, we can overcome it. (The guidelines to overcome the barriers in project team developments)
Proactive measures are adopted by the project managers in the project team development process, rather than getting reactive.
The project manager should review team performance as whenever required. This helps to find out the deviations and implement required corrective measures to it.
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