Part II

Improving Project Success with Human Resource Strategies and Processes

One of the biggest problems the senior management team (SMT) faces is to keep the human resources inventory current and its future profile in alignment with the changing project demands for those resources. Both the supply side and the demand side are variables and are at least partially controlled by the SMT. In this Part we will examine the supply side of the equation. The demand side will be discussed in Part III. The challenges are great. First of all, we know that projects are unique and will never be repeated under the same conditions ever again. That point is not debatable. What is also not debatable is that the complex project management approach is also not unique. In Part I, Challenges to Supporting Complex Projects, you learned about the project landscape and the project management life cycle (PMLC) Models and you know that a “one-size-fits-all” approach simply does not work. It needs to adapt to the changing project situation. That same argument pertains to the project manager (PM) and the team members. They also need to be adaptable. One type of PM cannot align with every project. As the project changes should we change the PM? That would be chaos! The only conclusion is that the PM must be adaptable to changing project conditions. My point is that the PM needs to possess a broad set of skills in anticipation of the needs of a complex project. I believe that the skill profile of the modern ...

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