Why? No Human Resource Control in Monitoring and Controlling Process Group of PMBOK Guide, 5th Edition? PMI must be wrong. This is the normal response I get from excited project managers when they find Human Resource Management, being an extremely important knowledge areas find no process for controlling their human resources in PMBOK's Monitoring and Controlling Process Group. Today, I will attempt to explain the reason and put to rest all your excitement and doubts for good.
First of all, please do not take that an insult to Project Human Resource Management, and look at it from project's perspective. We are, by no means attempting to belittle the importance and management of human resource in projects, nor are we treating them as machines or robots.
Human Resource Management in Projects, is treated equally as important as elsewhere, and that is exactly the reason, PMI understands that Human Resource only gets involved in the project when actual work has to be performed, and that happens in executing process group, according to PMBOK Guide, 5th Ed. During initiation and planning, there is no major influx of human resource, and people are taken on board on needed basis, because someone is required to be involved in inception and planning of the project. The main body of human resource is recruited or taken on board, only during execution when we are trying to implement our plans. During planning, like all other subsidiary plans for respective knowledge areas, we develop a detailed human resource plan, clearly mentioning what resources should be taken on board at what instance during the life of the project. For those few human resources who we have already taken on board for initiation or planning, are not actually implementing the project as yet, but if you like, you may treat them already in execution of their responsibilities.
Before a human resource can be put on a job, we have to ensure that
a. resource is capable enough to take on the job,
b. is already been hired, recruited or taken on board,
c. have been placed in the team formed to perform that job,
d. has adjusted with other team members as to be able to perform optimally,
e. have been briefed, acquainted with the job to be performed, and
f. if any training or team building effort is required to be undertaken, the resource has already gone through it.
This will ensure that the resource is fully armed and charged to undertake teh job assigned as an efficient, effective, productive and useful member of the team, as it is not the individual whose performance matters but of the team.
All this will have to happen during execution and before this person can be put on the job assigned as a team member. How all these processes will go on, is to be very well-defined in the human resource management plan. Therefore the cycle of forming the team, storming among the team members, norming (normalizing) within the team, must complete before the team can actually be asked to perform, which once performs satisfactorily, would adjourn the team. The actual work countable towards projects success starts while they are performing but we cannot expect the team to start performing until and unless the team has been formed, stormed and normed, which all must take its time and must complete before the actual duration of the activity in question. So from the start date of the actual activity we will work backwards as per the project human resource management plan, and determine the date of bringing the resources on board and forming them in a team. We must make all efforts to reduce the storming time by disciplined and managed interaction and get them normalized to be effective. The time for doing all this is being spent in execution, so you can see the human resource is being managed during execution. We will see the control part in a while.
Now look at the HR processes during Execution,
Acquire Project Team, where we mobilize the individual resources and form them into a team. Then we give them time to adjust as a team by minimal but only essential time spent in storming and norming.
Develop Project Team, is the process of briefing the team about their job, polishing their skills through any training, coaching, counseling, or facilitating. This will cement the relationship within the team and norming would have been achieved. That is the time when team is put on the job and actual duration of the activity starts after the team has been developed.
Manage Project Team, whatever is defined in project management plan, scope, cost and schedule baselines, would now be performed exactly according to the activity schedule, while the supervisor, team lead or the team manager will start managing them for the duration of this activity until they achieve the desired results and produce the expected product.
If they do not perform well, the work will not be done right and will not result in desired product, so the work will fall back to the team for improvement and they will repeat it till the time they do it right. But this redo may cost us heavily, so we need to identify the culprit and deal with her, as if she mends her ways and does it right. But project is not about individuals but is all about team. We have informed the team lead about his team's poor performance, how he deals with the individual members of the team, is the responsibility of that team lead and project manager does not want to get involved in that, as part of monitoring and controlling responsibility. So all dealings with the human resource, good or bad, reward or coercion, all has to happen during execution and not in control.
Having made this point, let me touch upon the issue from another angle. Is the project all about people? If it was, we would have given priority to HR needs over the project objectives, strategy and even the organization. No, people here are means to achieve the objective of the project and not the main objective themselves. Having said that, I, by no means would say that Human Resource can be treated badly or unethically for the good of the project. We are supposed to comply with all HR Management requirements but that will happen during execution when the resource is actually employed on and accomplishing a responsibility. All dealings with an individuals, would be done in execution, because once this job is done, we may no more have this resource available to us.
Monitoring and Controlling process group is about the project and would basically be hooked on to meet the scope, both the product scope and the project scope. We do not need a process here to write performance report of the team or an individual team member, because that can only be done by the person who is managing this resource during execution.
To meet the product scope, we, first get the deliverable inspected through the Quality Control process and when we have a Verified Deliverable, which has passed the QC, it can only go to Validate Scope process, which will again inspect it, this time for User Acceptance. Once a Deliverable clears this inspection, it is now an Accepted Deliverable or you can say Validated Deliverable, ready to be handed over to the customer.
To meet the project scope, we have to post review all the work which has been completed, for completion and acceptance of the processes and work. All the controls available in Monitoring and Controlling process group, will receive a copy of the Work Performance Data being generated from Executing process group, and compare it with the respective management plan from Project Management Plan.
That would mean Control Schedule compare the Work Performance Data with the Schedule Baseline and would do a thorough analysis of work performed, to see if it is exactly in accordance to the plan or there is some variance noted, whether the variance is positive or negative, does that have any impact on the scope, schedule or cost baselines of the remaining work of the project, and if yes, a change request can be moved from Control Schedule process to be submitted to Perform Integrated Change Control which is an Integration Management Knowledge Areas process. But the Work Performance Data analyzed will yield processed data or Work Performance Information, as a result of the analysis carried out by Control Schedule process. The same will happen in each control process, like Control Scope, Control Cost, Control Procurement etc. All the Work Performance and any Forecasts generated from Schedule and Cost, would be received by the Monitor and Control Project Work process which is again an Integration Management Knowledge Areas process.
All Work Performance Information, when received from all controls by Monitor and Control Project Work process, are then consolidated, integrated into a single Work Performance Report. This Work Performance Report helps the Monitor and Control Project Work process to further analyze the big picture holistically and a Change Request could even be launched from here. The Work Performance Data and Change Request, if any, from here are also sent to Perform Integrated Change Control process, which is responsible to get the Approvals/Rejections on each Change Requests, it has so far received from all controls in Monitoring and Controlling Process Group and even from Executing Process Group.
You have seen that all the controls with an exception of Perform Integrated Change Control process itself, have the right to move a change request, either as a result of the deliverable inspection or post review of work by any control. Work Performance Report is used here to help decde the fate of various Change Requests.
All the analysis being carried out by various controls in Monitoring and Controlling process group is focused either on the deliverable or the work, there are no human resources being made answerable by name. The same Work Performance Report is sent back to Executing process group, to decide how the respective resources are dealt with, which may even be rewarded for good job done or coerced for poor performance. Work Performance has nothing to do with Human Resource but it deals with the work of the project. The treatment meted by the individual team members is based on the Work Performance Report but is by their respective Team Leaders or Supervisors.
That is why there is absolutely no need to have any control process for Human Resource in Monitoring and Controlling process group. In case, I was unable to make my case, do let me know, as we can seek expert advice from other professionals.
I generally agree with you, but, I would simply pick just one reason why there is no need to include "the monitoring and controlling process" in human resource management that, unlike the other types of resources, team members are not considered as resources which can be monitored or controlled by the supervisors or managers, unless they are treated as the simple broken spare parts which can be replaceable, adjustable or even repaired at any time for better performance. Individual and/ or team performance might differ based on situational leadership, different work environments, team morale, maturity of team building, communication etc.
IMHO, the processes of "Manage the Project Team" and "Develop the Project Team" of "Executing Process Group" might be iteratively and interactively performed with related processes to effectively track the team (individual) performance and manage the team changes.
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1 reply by Suhail Iqbal
May 18, 2017 7:43 PM
Suhail Iqbal
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I fully agree with this dimension you have highlighted.
This is changing with PMBOK 6, since the knowledge area is how moving from Human Resources to Project Resource Management.
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1 reply by Suhail Iqbal
May 18, 2017 7:44 PM
Suhail Iqbal
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Yes, since they are no more being specific about human resource, so focus is now more on non-living unintelligent resource. Human resource will go by the flow.
I generally agree with you, but, I would simply pick just one reason why there is no need to include "the monitoring and controlling process" in human resource management that, unlike the other types of resources, team members are not considered as resources which can be monitored or controlled by the supervisors or managers, unless they are treated as the simple broken spare parts which can be replaceable, adjustable or even repaired at any time for better performance. Individual and/ or team performance might differ based on situational leadership, different work environments, team morale, maturity of team building, communication etc.
IMHO, the processes of "Manage the Project Team" and "Develop the Project Team" of "Executing Process Group" might be iteratively and interactively performed with related processes to effectively track the team (individual) performance and manage the team changes.
I fully agree with this dimension you have highlighted. Saving Changes...
This is changing with PMBOK 6, since the knowledge area is how moving from Human Resources to Project Resource Management.
Yes, since they are no more being specific about human resource, so focus is now more on non-living unintelligent resource. Human resource will go by the flow. Saving Changes...
