Who Should Be on Your Team?
The answer to this question depends on the size and complexity
of your project.
Medium and large projects in most functional organizations
tend to rely on the core teamconcept. These kinds of projects
often require a substantial amount of work to be performed by
several functional areas (departments) within the organization.
In the core team model, you try to obtain one representative
from each functional area assigned to your project. This repre-
sentative serves as your single point of accountabilityfor all
work performed within his or her department or work group.
On smaller projects, it makes more sense to exam-
ine the major elements of
work to be done. You
should then try to obtain
individual team members
according to how well their
particular skills match a
given element of work.
Whatever the size of
your project or anticipated
team configuration, it’s
likely that functional man-
agers (department heads) will be viewed as the resource
providers.
Ordinarily, you would seek out a given functional manager
armed with information on the project and a description of the
type of resource needed. In many cases, you’ll probably have a
specific person in mind for the assignment.
In an ideal world, the resource assigned to work on your
project represents the optimum match of your needs and their
skills. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out that way.
All too often, you’ll get somebody who happens to be avail-
able at the time. To be blunt, you may get offered a person who
tends to be less in demand, often due to inferior skills or an
undesirable behavior pattern. In other words, everyonewants
80 Project Management
Functional managerThe
boss of any member of
your team.Also known as a
functional supervisor, this person typi-
cally leads a specific work group, such
as Marketing, Software Development,
or Engineering. In most matrix organi-
zations, functional managers are
responsible for assigning the required
resources to your project.