Acquire Project Team

Acquiring a project team is the process of getting the resources necessary to execute the project. There are five inputs into acquiring the project team: enterprise environmental factors, organizational process assets, roles and responsibilities, project organization charts, and the staffing management plan. All of these were discussed in the last section.

The only topic that has been expanded upon is that of the enterprise environmental facts. The areas of discussion are now labeled:

Availability When are people available, and who are they?

Ability What skill sets do these people have?

Experience How much experience do the people assigned to the project have?

Interests Are the project team members interested in their assigned tasks?

Costs How much will the project team members be paid?

The tools and techniques used in acquiring the project team include pre-assignment, negotiation, acquisition, and virtual teams. Pre-assignment simply means that some members of the project team were selected before the project started. This can happen because of a contract or because a special skill set is needed.

Negotiation is a very important part of the project manager's daily duties. The project manager may have to negotiate with the line managers for his or her project team in order to make certain that they will be available when it will fit best for project execution. He or she may also have to negotiate with other project teams, particularly if special skill sets are used in both the projects and resources for these skills are scarce.

Acquisition of project team members will occur when there are no in-house resources that have the skills necessary to complete tasks within the project. In this case, the organization will use outsourcing to fill the needs.

Virtual teams are defined by the PMBOK as teams who fulfill their roles with little or no time spent meeting face-to-face. There are many different ways virtual teams occur in organizational life. The first will be if the members of the project team are not located in the same area. Multinational projects are an example. Another reason for a virtual team can be that someone with a special skill works in another place geographically but communicates electronically. There may be issues for handicapped personnel that prevent them from working on-site. And finally, projects that would normally be discontinued because of travel costs can be done using virtual teams.

Q.	Getting project team members assigned when there is no one in-house with the necessary skill sets is known as ________.
		A.	Acquisition
		B.	Contract supervision
		C.	Management details
		D.	Actual reporting

The answer is A. This is the act of acquiring those skills needed to complete a project.

Q.	A project team with members located in the U.S., India, and Germany would be called a ________.
		A.	Perfect team
		B.	Virtual team
		C.	Scattered team
		D.	Difficult team

The answer is B. In a virtual team, not all team members are in the same geographical location.

Q.	Working with a line manager to get a skilled person on the project team would be an example of ________.
		A.	Decision making
		B.	Team building
		C.	Trouble
		D.	Negotiation

The answer is D. Negotiation is a significant skill required to run a project. The project manager will constantly be negotiating with other managers for resources during the execution of a project.