Of all the resources utilized during a project, the team working on the project is the most complex to manage. When motivated, your project team can take up Herculean tasks and not break a sweat but when things go wrong there is little saving the ship unless you find a way to change course in time. Motivation is a complex art, while the rule of the thumb is appreciation and reward, the same incentives do not work on all individuals.

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It is easy to compare team members to cogs of a machine, but in real life situations, not all these ‘cogs’ get along well. People from different backgrounds make for different personalities and these personalities can clash…a scenario that tends to spoil the working atmosphere.

To make sure there is a good working relationship between team members there are some ice breakers that can help the cause along. Team discussions can help and so can tools such as Johari. The tool helps map personalities with a fixed list of adjectives.

Each individual can map his own personality and others can map the characteristics they see in that person as well. While seemingly simplistic, the tool tells us a lot about how others see us along with giving team members some feedback about them as well. It can be a tool for self realization, and one that can help people gauge how to improve their outlook as well as better understand colleagues.

I recently had a chance to read a paper by Allan L. Scherr of IBM on managing highly effective software projects. In brief, the premise of the paper is that creative breakthroughs can be induced by setting a highly aggressive schedule and doing whatever is necessary to meet deadline. Basically the method calls for inviting project participants to commit to delivering quality work on or ahead of schedule.

Photography by fdecomite.

After the project participants are on-board, the idea is to make a declaration pertaining to the delivery schedule. "The project will be completed within 18 months using only the staff on-hand and at 70% of the original budget estimate." Like Babe Ruth pointing to the fences before a homerun, the managers in the organization call their shot. Every member of the project commits not only to the details of the project delivery, but also to whatever else is important to each member of the team (vacation time, limiting overtime, etc.)
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I will be hitting you soon with a great series about the use of metaphors and examples to explain project management concepts.

To warm you up, my column at TechTarget: Estimating actual project progress.

"I wish that everyone who is involved in projects finally gets the fact that just spending hours or money has nothing to do with actually making progress."

"I have thought about it for a while, and I finally come up with a way to explain this to managers. I tried shouting. I tried slapping. But I settled for something they recognize, an image they see the entire day during work hours (when they are "researching on the Internet"): The download progress bar."

A Gantt chart groups human resources with specific tasks. Further, it allows the project manager to identify dependencies between tasks, laying out the entire project in a timeline fashion. People championing the Gantt chart will tell you that it can be difficult or impossible for the project manager to correctly identify the critical path without one. They say it can help a project manager decide which employees to put on which teams.

Many people voice the concern that the format of the Gantt chart is too limiting. Edward Tufte notes how most Gantt charts for larger projects can easily turn into grid prisons, where important data is easily lost in a sea of sparse task descriptions. No real actionable To-Do lists. No substance. Just a grid prison that does more to demotivate a team than inspire it.

That's not the kind of information you want your team to be staring at from day-to-day. That's not in your face information! We live in a time where development teams use Continuous Integration systems to communicate Build Status Using Lava Lamps.
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Today I got an email from Ken Thompson about his SwarmTeam project. I have talked to the guy earlier this year, and his story is amazing.

You really have to check it out… and imagine your project swarm team

One of the biggest challenges facing those who promote media, brands, communities or causes is how to meaningfully engage with mobile online groups in a way which, instead of turning them off, turns them into ambassadors and champions. Thats where Swarmteams comes in - the Community Engagement Tool inspired by nature.

Check out the 4-minute video which outlines the 7 simple steps for engagement marketing using Swarmteams.