Personal Characteristics and Attributes

This McLaughlin and McLaughlin’s Project Professional’s post is the fifth in a series of discussions regarding current challenges with the staffing aspects of your project management team.  The focus is on the managerial aspects of human resource planning and acquisition.  This post (like Part 4, our last post) addresses acquiring the human resources (people) or staffing.  In this case, we focus on acquisition of the project manager. This acquisition of project manager resources will be the subject of several posts over the next several weeks.

A key action, many believe that this selection/acquisition (the project manager) is the most important activity in staffing the project management team.

In past posts, the acquisition strategies have been discussed and evaluated.

This, the first post on acquiring the project manager, will address the personal characteristics and attributes that are important in a professional project manager.  Before looking at sources for a project manager candidate, one needs to settle on the key characteristics (personal and other) that are needed in the specific project and the project execution strategy for your project.  From past posts, it has been asserted that enterprise environmental factors are key inputs.  These factors influence the characteristics and attributes that are needed for a project within your organization.

Please Remember –Teams of people [not machines and not software] build projects. Consequently, if you cannot acquire the requisite staffing, you are not prepared to execute the project [at least as planned].

Please Remember –This is a team, not a group of individuals. Have you noticed that so many sports teams with superstars rarely win championships?  Further, have you noticed that championship teams have few, if any, superstars?  It is the project team, not the individual that must be staffed and developed.  As they say, there is no “I” in team. [Read more…]