Marginalia

• A difficult question is the demarcation of Human Resource Management and Procurement Management: Sometimes your team members are bought people being paid for their working time, not for the deliveries of their work. Hence they are members of the project team and the project manager has to manage their skills and their cooperation (= «Develop Project Team»). But the management of their contracts is still part of the procurement management (= «Plan Contracting» or «Contract Administration»). On the other hand people sometimes work in the same room like members of project team, although they are paid by the seller of a solution which the project has bought as integrated unit. Strictly spoken, in this case these extern workers are not members of the project team and the project manager has not to reflect their skills and activities, but only their deliveries. And he has not to train them, but to discuss the problems with the vendor of the bought solution (= «Contract Administration»).

Project Human Resources Management

The knowledge area of human resources management includes different aspects:

  • The Project Human Resource Management has the task to "[...] organize and manage the project team".
  • The project team "[...] is comprised of the people who have assigned roles and responsibilities for completing the project".
  • The project management team "[...] is a subset of the project team and is responsible for project management activities such as planning, controlling, and closing". It might be called "the core, executive, or leadership team".
  • The project sponsor - as owner of the project who provides the money - "[...] works with the project management team typically assisting with matters such as project funding, clarifying scope questions, and influencing others in order to benefit the project"

Like the other knowledge areas the human resources management has an internal structure which follows the pattern of «plan», «execute», and «control»:

  • At first one has to plan the human resoures management itself by "[...] identifying and documenting project roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships, as well as creating the staffing management plan"
  • Secondly one has to "[...] (obtain) the human resources needed to complete the project".
  • Then the team must be developed: On the one hand the team must become a team instead of being a collection of isolated persons. And on the other hand sometimes the skill of some team members must be improved with respect to the project targets. Developing project team includes "[...] improving the competencies and interaction of team members to enhance project performance".
  • And finally the project team has to be managed by "[...] tracking team member performance, providing feedback, resolving issues, and coordinating changes to enhance project performance".

(comp. PMBOK3, p. 199)