Projects benefit from a well thought-out team selection process. This article helps simplify that process by analyzing typical team member roles.

Large-scale projects benefit from the care that is taken in building effective project teams. The mix of team members can easily make or break a project. As in any team sport, if the members are vague as to their roles, there is a greater likelihood of miscommunication, colliding headlong with each other and dropping the ball.

A project will generally start with a project director. This person is responsible for the selection of a project manager and for communicating to her the goals of the project. Together, they should choose the team members based on required skills, budget and availability.

The project director may also be the project sponsor. The project sponsor is ultimately responsible for the project’s success or failure. This person controls the funding and makes any decisions that alter the project goals or cause a variance in its budget.

The project plan details the project’s activities, timeline and budget. The completed plan is critical in the project team selection process. Therefore, it is normal for the project manager to assemble the team only after she has completed at least an initial pass of the plan.

Once the project plan is created, the project team is selected from a pool of candidates who are subject matter experts in either the problem or the solution or both. You can expect that pool to be reduced by the number of people who will not be available, based on the project timeline. Expect it to be further reduced by the number of people whose hourly rates exceed the budgeted cost of project team resources. From the remaining candidates, a team of no more than five members should be chosen.

“Five” as the magic number for a project team bears no special significance except to consciously limit the team size and compel members to delegate individual tasks to persons outside of the team. This enables the team to stay focused on the higher levels of the project (i.e., the phases and activities).

Of the five project team members, one should take the role of project coordinator. This person reports directly to the project manager. His role is to keep the project on schedule and on task, on a day-to-day basis. Some of the ways he might do this are through regular communication meetings (who’s doing what?), productivity and quality measurement (are we doing it well?), timecards (how much has been done so far?) and milestone assessment (are we there yet?).

With the coordinator keeping an inward focus towards the team activities, the project manager can spend more time working on the external influences that can work against the forward momentum of the team. These include conflicting activities, changing goals and priorities, resistance to change, and any other roadblocks the team may encounter.

With all that has been said about the leadership within the project, it may be expected that the team members each have a very specific role. Actually, the opposite is often the case. Team membership needs to come from a cross section of the company. Each member should represent the interests of some segment of the population that either can benefit from the project, or can be part of the ongoing support of the implemented solution. They need not be hands-on resources, but they must have a working knowledge of the areas in which they will be participating. They will need to be able to delegate tasks to others outside of the project or, at the very least, be able to designate the appropriate “go-to” people for information, action or guidance.

Within the team boundaries, members maintain peer-to-peer relationships. That is, one team member cannot pull rank on another simply because he holds a higher position within the corporation. The best team member is the one who keeps her team goals in focus and recognizes the extent to which she can contribute to the solution.

The longer the project, the more likely that team members will drop off or be added to the project as the core team moves along the project timeline. This is because different phases of the project may require different areas of expertise and involve different business units. In this case, it is imperative that the baton is passed smoothly from exiting team members to entering ones and that there is sufficient overlap to allow the incoming members to transition seamlessly into the activities in progress.

Many companies rotate employees onto project teams as part of an overall career development strategy. This is an effective, economical way of providing on-the-job training for process improvement skills, so long as there are enough project-savvy members on the team to assist the newcomers in protocol and expectations. Without this assistance, shuffling people on and off project teams becomes a frustrating exercise that reduces the effectiveness of the team and jeopardizes the project’s outcome.

Every project manager has her ideal team in mind. Drafting the right members is like drafting new players onto a basketball team. You may not ever have the luxury of first pick, nor will your rookies always meet expectations. But whomever you wind up with, your goal is not only to communicate the rules of the game, but also to impart a clear understanding of the boundaries and responsibilities of each player’s role. Then it’s just a matter of calling the plays and letting the team members run with the ball.

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