Staffing Your Project Team

Great project managers always seem the get the best people for their projects. What’s their secret? Establishing relationships with management works best:

You sell your project directly. With a good relationship, you can discuss in detail the benefits and drawbacks of the project as well as the development opportunities for having the manager’s employees work on your project. The manager also gets an opportunity to talk about specific objectives they have for their employee, which you can support via the task assignments and guidance you provide.

You can perform part of the managers’ work. Giving support and feedback to your team members along with periodic appraisals of their work as the project progresses is very useful to assigning manager. You can make their job easier, especially if you write performance evaluations in the context of the manager’s growth objectives for their employees. Managers who feel confident you do this well will work with you more readily when you seek project team members.

You can ask for a favor. If you need in-demand skills, a good relationship with assigning managers significantly increases the chances you’ll get the in-demand resources you need. Trust-based relationships make it easier for managers to take a risk and assign the most in-demand staff members to your project, even in instances where it is helpful but not necessary.

You can change resources more readily. If you have issues with a resource, the assigning manager is more likely to listen to you and support replacing your team member. At the very least, they are more likely to work with you to help improve your team member’s performance.

The team members you get make or break your projects. Getting to know the managers who assign employees to your projects is the best way to ensure you get the people you need to successfully deliver expected outcomes.

For more about working with team members, check out Chris Croft’s Managing Resources Across Project Teams course.