How To Create The Perfect Project Dream Team For Your Upcoming Project

As a PM, you have a lot of responsibility. You’re going to need to plan the project in great detail, communicate with stakeholders and customers, guide the project through milestones, navigate risks, and hopefully, eventually lead the project to success. But this isn’t a solo mission. This isn’t a job you do alone. You’re on this mission with a very important addition to help you get to the end successfully – your team.

Your team is so important. You’re delegating jobs to them, driving them and managing them but they are the skills, the ideas, the morale and the work. They are so important and so, the pressure is on you to choose the right people for the job. It isn’t just a case of collecting any group of people to do the job. You need the right people for the job.

So how do you create the perfect team for the project you are in charge of? Ask yourself the following questions to help you get the dream team you need to achieve project success.

Do They Have The Right Skills?

It is incredibly important that you select the best people for this particular project. Try and think past their skills on previous projects or times you have worked with them and instead judge what they can do with this new project. You should also look at their skills in combination with other people on the team. They may have several skills you need, but you won’t want one person doing too many jobs. Which skill will each person specialize in, and how will that compliment the skills of others on the project. If there are any skills gaps, consider if you need a new team member or if you could bridge that gap with a freelancer to save money.

Can They Estimate Time Well?

32% of projects in organisations never complete on time. This occurs for many different reasons but one reason can be that team members are not estimating how long their tasks will take. Just one delayed task can have a knock-on effect with all other tasks, so it is really important all team members are good at estimating how long tasks will take.

Do They Have Rapport With You And The Rest Of The Team?

Team conflict is an underrated issue in project management. Conflict can be bad enough to cause productivity to drop or to cause work quality to drop, it can even be bad enough to cause project failure in the most extreme cases. At the least it is an unwanted distraction so, it pays to ensure your team will get along. To promote harmony in your project, avoid hiring anyone with a reputation for gossiping or being a little too dramatic. You might also want to avoid hiring combinations of people who have a history of clashing. Strong personalities can be great but not when they cause distracting conflicts and issues.

Do They Have Project Management Training?

They might have a great skills set but do they understand project management? 61% of organisations offer project management training, but that leaves 39% who don’t. Having a team with the basic knowledge of how project management works is certainly useful.

How Do They Respond To How You Work?

You likely have a PM framework or methodology you use as standard or at least prefer to lean towards. It will be helpful for you if your team have experience working in that way. They won’t have to overcome new ways of working and will slip into the project process quicker than they would if your working processes were alien to them.

Do They Practise Effective Communication?

You and your entire team will need to work with people from various levels in your organisation, people outside of the organisation, people with different personalities from different backgrounds and with different ways of working. Communication is so important in project management and your project team members must be able to communicate effectively with everyone and anyone. Rubbish communication really is a key project killer.

Are They Organised?

A chaotic project isn’t likely to be successful, so you’ll want team members who are used to being organised. Perhaps they use online kanban software to stay organised, or they have a preferred app or tool to work under stress. Whatever their method, as long as it helps them stay organised that is a benefit to your project.

Ultimately, there are lots of different factors to consider when selecting the perfect team for your latest project. With so much of the success of the project riding on your team, it certainly pays to take your time and to be extra vigilant when creating your dream team.