Diagnosing Problems in a Project Team

The job title "project manager" does not fully capture the essence of the project manager's work. Of course, the project manager manages the projects, but do not forget that the project is carried out by specific people – members of the project team. And how successfully the project owner manages his team largely determines the success or failure of the project. Perhaps the most challenging (and by far the most frustrating) part of managing a team is dealing with the problem of poor performance.

Below are a number of troubleshooting tips to help you make this frustrating part of the job easier and more efficient. This article is not an exhaustive guide to this problem. It only provides you with some of the knowledge gained over the years of practical work.

Before implementing any of the measures described here, coordinate it with your human resources department and study the company's personnel policy well.

Diagnosing Performance Issues

You need to make sure and be sure that your project is experiencing performance and efficiency issues before taking any action to fix them. If you try to adjust for low productivity when in fact there are no such problems, then at best it will be useless, and in the worst case it will simply destroy the morale of the team. To do this, it is necessary to diagnose the problems.

What is the low efficiency of the project team? Chronic over-schedule, behind schedule, budget overruns, or poor quality may or may not be signs that your project has performance issues. Performance issues are just one possible cause of these troubles, but if low efficiency is the cause of poor project execution, here are a few signs of it.

• Frequent absenteeism. One or more team members are absent for two or more days per month. This refers to unscheduled absences, not a real long-term illness or injury. Mondays and Fridays are particularly popular days for absenteeism, as it extends the weekend.
• A member of the project team exceeds the deadlines. This team member simply cannot complete the work on time. Such people assure you that they will be able to complete the work in the allotted time, take the result seriously, but then disappoint you on the day the deadline ends.
• A team member does a poor job. The name of this team member is constantly mentioned in the notifications of errors and problems issued by quality control. Such employees regularly report that they fixed the error, but in fact they did not, or the elimination of this error led to the appearance of many other errors.
• A team member always asks for help. This team member can always be seen near near nearby jobs receiving assistance regarding their work.
• Team members complain about another member preventing them from working effectively. The team member they complain about reduces the efficiency of the work, as he always asks for help and distracts the team from work.
• Conflicts in the team. One team member always engages in quarrels with other team members and provokes everyone to conflict.
• Conflicts between a team member and stakeholders external to the team. This team member is always involved in quarrels with someone external to the project team. Often these are the same people as the participants in the conflicts within the team.

If your team exhibits any of these signs, there is a good chance that the team's poor performance contributes to poor project performance, which means that appropriate action needs to be taken.