How to get our project teams to perform similarly?

The lack of a business case is exactly why there are only extremely rare instances where project teams would want to operate like those highly specialized functions. Those economies only apply to an arms race. Most nations can't afford them. You may be able to use technology to mitigate the risks, but that technology itself is extremely expensive when used very rarely.

Similarly, if you have a purely project based team (no matrixing) where certain specialists are dedicated to a team for the duration but only participate during a tiny part of it, you are carrying that cost for the length of the project. The benefit is they are available when you need them.

One bit of wisdom given to me as a race car driver myself by a long time professional in the sport is "Slow down. You'll go faster." Sometimes, rather than trying to always perform at 110% where the margin of error is zero, and the cost of errors is extremely high, you are better off focusing on sustainability and consistency. The strategies involved often consider whether you will benefit more over a longer period if your raw speed is better, or if you stop less.

Likewise any projects perform better when treated like a marathon, rather than like a sprint. There is a saying we often use when projects involve bursts of high intensity to meet deadlines, and then large gaps before we can engage again: "Hurry up and wait."

Dear Senthil

Thank you for participating in this reflection and for your opinion.

I know organizations (operations) where the daily meeting is held and they have not implemented scrum in the project development approach.

We agree that the performances are achieved by training

In a project context, who should bear the costs of training? The organization or the project?

Being project teams outsourced (current practice nowadays) will the organization invest in training these people?

Yes, a team huddle (daily or not) was a common practice long before Scrum popularized it within the agile community.

Holding some form of reflection/retrospective session was also an important practice long before agilists stumbled into it. But few teams execute them well unfortunately. I've written about this, and how to actually execute well, in Guided Continuous Improvement (GCI) at https://disciplinedagiledelivery.com/gci/.

Dear Suneel
Thanks for sharing

I take the opportunity to congratulate you on the fantastic results.

Dear Suneel

I am convinced that with everyone's input we focus on richer and knowing other perspectives

Thank you for your participation

Dear Thomas

Thank you for participating in this reflection and for your opinion.

I really liked the firefighters example and the tip: "They normally do a great job, because they share a meaningful purpose"

I subscribe: "Think one of the most important responsibilities of a project manager is to build and maintain the team. It starts with understanding what capabilities you need (both technical and behavioral), select the appropriate people, convey a purpose / vision and develop trust (which is sometimes called team building) "

Yes, a team purpose is perceived differently by FTEs, contractors and even part timers.
Given that the gig economy reaches 40% of the workforce this has a tremendous impact on building teams.
Gig workers are concerned about their profits first, part timers about their time commitment.

Besides affecting teams, it limits organizations in building knowledge assets. Working in partnership networks mitigates this. But gig workers are no reliable partners.

Dear Scott
Thank you for participating in this reflection and for your opinion.

We absolutely agree on: "It takes time for a team to learn how to trust each other and work together well"

As Project Managers and teams are outsourced, how do you achieve high performance?

How should these professionals be trained and developed to perform well as teams?

Who should support this investment in training? (the project?)

It's really worrying: "They made it pretty clear that the contractors weren't being included in strategy discussions, the sharings of learning within the PMO, and other important things. I was shocked that they weren't treating the contractors as full team members. "

How can this situation be overcome?

When entire teams are outsourced, including the manager/leader, then you need to rely on that team to be effective. That navy seal team is no longer yours, they're simply a team of mercenaries whom you are hiring to do a job. So whatever organization is offering those mercenaries to you is responsible for helping them to become effective. The onus is on you to be sufficiently competent to hire, direct, and monitor that team. And part of their overhead, which you pay for, is the other organization will find ways to enable the team to learn and improve over time. Maybe that team has been assigned to your organization to learn a new set of skills as they get the job done for you. That expertise that you're hiring them for? Someone else paid for them to gain that expertise. The expertise that the next organization is going to pay them for having? You'll pay for that on their current gig with you. The implication is that even though you'll pay for it, you'll only benefit from that team's improvements for as long as you outsource to them. The minute you let them move on you lose that expertise, and you'll likely have paid a premium for it because of the outsourcing relationship.

Short-term strategies, such as outsourcing to another organization for their "gig team" or contracting people to work as "gig workers" is a short-term strategy that provides you with short-term benefits. This is fine as it gets the immediate job done and doesn't leave you with FTEs that you are then responsible for. BUT, any improvements or learnings that those people accrued while working for you go out the door when they do.

Implications:
1. If you want to gain the long-term benefits of investing in people's learnings then you need to keep those people around long term. The "gig mindset" pretty much prevents that if the people leave after a gig is done.
2. If you want to gain the long-term benefits of a team's learnings then you need to keep that team together long term. The "classic project mindset" where a team disbands at the end of a project pretty much prevents that.
3. If you decide to keep a gig worker or a gig team on for the next gig, then the next gig, then the next gig,... you've effectively hired very expensive people full time. This isn't this cost effective. Furthermore, in some countries, such as the US, it's not really a viable options as there are time limits on how long you can keep contractors on.

Dear Scott

Very interesting these thoughts of yours

Thanks for sharing

Do we agree that high performance is achieved through training and continuous improvement and is it a medium to long term process?

How can we achieve this (high performances) from outsourced teams and project managers?

There are several ways to achieve team performance, and certainly training and continuous improvement are two of them.

You can achieve this in outsourced teams, or with contractors, using similar strategies. If you bring these gig workers into your org and take responsibility for them during the period they work for you, then you can choose to include them in any skills improvement efforts. Of course you're limited to what is allowed within the countries you operate in. Many countries have employment laws that force you to treat contractors/gig workers differently than FTEs and this often hampers your ability to support their learning efforts.

A common strategy is to put into the contract mechanisms to invest in these sorts of people. For example, if you want to provide training for a team that is composed partly of contract/outsource people and partly of FTEs, then the contracting companies may need to pay for their share of the training budget or not charge you for their people's time while on training.