The Path to the PMP (Part 9)

Following 20 years at a large Canadian telecommunications firm, Bruce established the project management consulting firm Solutions Management Inc (SMI). Since 1999, he has provided contract project/program management services, been a source for project management support personnel and created/delivered courses to over 7,000 participants in Canada, the United States and England.

  Career Development   Using PMI Standards  

Have you ever had a boss? Have you ever directly managed a team of subordinates? If you answered “yes” to either of these questions (and how could you not?), the Project Human Resource Management knowledge area will make sense to you. It’s through this knowledge area that project managers apply what they have learned from either managing direct reports or learning from the good and bad points of a past boss.

There are four processes in the HR Management knowledge area. You will recall by looking back at page 43 of the PMBOK that the Develop Human Resource Plan process falls in the planning process group. The other three processes all reside in the executing process group. The big-picture thinking is that we project managers decide during the planning process what people we need on our team in order for our project to be successful. By now you are familiar with the strong approach that we must take with our project (remember the mantra of “we will do whatever it takes for our project to be successful”) and in executing we acquire the people we need; hearing “no” is not an option. Having secured the team we need, we then develop and manage them as any team leader would.

Starting with the Develop Human Resource Plan process, we document roles and responsibilities, identify the skills that are needed and establish an …

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