Introduction
Regardless of what you do in an organization, a staff is required in order to execute work tasks and activities. If you are a project manager, you need to have an adequate staff for executing your project activities.
Just having the required number of staff members for your project will not help you to successfully execute the project activities. These staff members selected for your project should have necessary skills to execute the project responsibilities as well. In addition, they should have the necessary motivation and availability as well.
Therefore, staffing of your project should be done methodologically with a proper and accurate plan.
Understanding the Purpose
Before you start staffing your project, you need to understand the purpose of your project. First of all, you need to understand the business goals for the project and other related objectives. Without you being clear about the end results, you may not be able to staff the best resources for your project.
Spend some time brainstorming about your project purpose and then try to understand the related staffing requirements. Understand the different skills required for project execution, in order to understand what kind of staff you want.
Be Precise
Be precise when you prepare your staffing management plan. Make your staffing plan in black and white. Do not include things just to make the people happy. Always include the truth in your plan in a bold way. Whenever required, emphasize the roles and responsibilities of the staff and organizational policies as well.
The workforce should be disciplined in order to execute a project successfully. Therefore, you need to include discipline requirements to the staffing plan as well.
Use a Good Template
When it comes to articulating the plan, you need to use a good template for that. First of all, there are chances that you can find a suitable one from your organization itself. Talk to your peers and see whether there are templates that they have used in the past. In case if your organization has a knowledge management system, search for a template there.
Once you get a good template, articulate everything in simple language. The audience of the plan is the management and the staff. Therefore, articulation should be clear and simple.
Making the Connection
Connecting with your staff is the key. By properly connecting, you can measure them for their skills and attitude.
Interviewing the staff members is the best way to properly engaging with them. By doing this, you can measure their skills and you can see whether they are suitable for your project requirements. For interviews, you can come up with an interview schedule and a set of critical questions you may want to ask.
In case there are things you cannot uncover through interviews, ask assistance from HR.
Training
Before you start staffing for the project, you need to know what skills required for your project. This way, you can measure the skills of your potential staff during the interviews. In most instances, you will not find all the staff members with desired skills.
In such cases, you will have to request for trainings from the training department. Get applicable staff members trained on required skills in advance to the project commencement.
Rewards and Consequences
Staffing management plan should be crystal clear about the staff rewards as well as the consequences. The plan should illustrate the rewards in detail and how a staff member or the entire staff becomes eligible for rewards.
As an example, early delivery of projects is rewarded by paying a bonus to the staff members, who are involved in the project. This is one of the best ways to keep the staff motivation and focused on the project activities.
Considerations
In addition to the above areas, there can be additional considerations. One might be the duration of your staffing requirement. It's very rare that a project will require all the staff during the entire project life cycle.
Usually, the staffing requirement varies during different phases of the project. Refer to the following diagram in order to identify the staff variation.
Conclusion
Staffing management plan for a project plays a critical role in project management. Since resources are the most critical factor for executing the project activities, you should be clear about your staffing requirements.
Once you know what you want, derive the plan to address the same.
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