EXECUTING STAGE (HUMAN RESOURCE) : ACQUIRE PROJECT TEAM

Acquire Project Team is the process in the knowledge area of Human resource, particularly in executing processes group. It is the process that helps to confirm the availability of persons and obtain the team to perform the project activities. The process also involves team selection, effective negotiation and responsibility assignment after the selection. It is the process that if it goes wrong, the project will be affected in terms of time, cost, quality, risks and customer satisfaction.

This process can be done by first referring Human resource management plan that provides guidelines on how the project team will be identified, staffed, managed and then released after completion of the project. The plan will also provide the roles, responsibilities, skills, competencies, number of people needed and time periods that each team member will be needed for the project. Enterprise Environmental Factors and Organizational Process Assets, on the other hand, will provide the existing information on human resources such as availability, level of competency, experience, cost rate, locations, organizational structure, policies, procedures to mention a few.

The tools and techniques used to perform this process are:

• Pre-assignment whereby the project team are selected in advance because of
• the competitive proposal that needs to identify specific people or
• their expertise in particular projects or
• the project charter in which they were defined
• Negotiation whereby the project team are obtained by first negotiating with them until they reach an agreement that they are able, willing and authorized to work on the project until their responsibilities are completed. Most of the negotiations are done when there are scarcely specialized, qualified or certified human resources.  
• Acquisition from outside sources whereby the individual consultant is hired or external organization is subcontracted.
• Virtual teams whereby people who shared the goal, fulfil their roles without having face to face meetings. The virtual teams have resulted from multiple geographical areas, different working hours, disabilities or mobility limitations. They are also created because some of them are working from home or require to move forward with the project while ignoring travel expenses. The disadvantages of having virtual teams are misunderstandings due to communication, feeling isolated or difficulties in sharing knowledge and experience between them.
• Multi-criteria decision analysis whereby the project team is obtained by using selection criteria with high scores in
• availability during the project timeline
• cost according to the prescribed budget
• the experience that will contribute to the project success
• competency needed by the project
• knowledge of the similar project
• skills for implementation
• attitude to work as a team
• international factors like communication capabilities, location and time zone.

The outputs of Acquire project team are project staff assignments like project team directory, memos, schedules and project organization chart, resource calendars of each project team member that show the time periods available for their work on the project and updated project management plan when there is a need to change the team structure, roles or responsibilities to fulfil staffing requirements.

References:

PMI (2013). A Guide to the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide 5^th Ed.) USA, Project Management Institute

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