Acquiring the Needed Staff

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A project needs a project team. Let me restate that. A project needs a good, qualified, competent project team. Their competency, experience, and availability will directly influence the success of the project. Armed with this notion, the project manager may rely on a few different tools and techniques to obtain the needed project team resources.

Negotiating for Resources

Most projects require the project manager to negotiate for resources. The project manager will likely have to negotiate with functional managers to obtain the needed resources to complete the project work. The functional managers and the project manager may struggle over an employee's time due to demands in ongoing operations, other projects, and effective utilization of resources. In other instances, functional managers may want to assign under-utilized resources on projects to account for their employee's time.

Project managers may also have to negotiate with other project managers to share needed resources among projects. Scheduling the needed resources between the project teams will need to be coordinated so both projects may complete successfully.

An organization's politics certainly come into play with staff acquisitions. Functional managers may want project managers to carry extra resources on the project in exchange for key personnel, added deliverables to the project, or other 'favors' for the manager. In all instances, the project manager should follow the PMP Code of Professional Conduct. We'll discuss this infamous code of conduct in Chapter 13.

Working with Preassigned Staff

Project team members are often preassigned to a project for a number of reasons:

• Availability of the individual

• Promised as part of a competitive contract

• Required as part of the project charter of an internal project

• Opportunity for the staff member to complete on-the-job training

Whatever the reasoning behind the assignment of the staff to the project, the project manager should evaluate the project team for skills gaps, availability to complete the project work, and expectations of the project team members. The project manager must address any discrepancies between the requirements of the project work and the project team's ability to complete the work.

Procuring Staff

In some instances, the project manager may have no alternative but to procure the project team or individuals to complete the project work. Procurement will be discussed in detail in Chapter 12. In regard to project team procurement, reasons why the project manager can use this alternative include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The performing organization lacks the internal resources with the needed skills to complete the project work.

• The work is more cost effective to procure.

• The project team members are present within the organization, but they are not available to the current project.

• The project team members are present within the organization, but they cannot complete the needed work due to other project assignments.

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