Gain a working knowledge of Project Human Resource

Understand human resource management as an art balancing people and culture within project constraints. See how project managers enable work by coordinating schedule, risk, stakeholders, and technical experts.

Identify the client, project manager, project sponsor and executive sponsor, project director, steering committee, project team, and contractors, and explain their high-level to ground-level roles across the project lifecycle.

Analyze how governance structure scales with project complexity, weighing risk reduction against flexibility and accountability, and identify who approves spending and who serves as the client.

Explore methods to engage project personnel, including internal promotion, expression of interest, external merit-based recruitment, and selecting between fixed-term, contractor, or permanent arrangements given the project's finite nature.

Staff a project by assembling the right mix of skills to cover the scope of work, identify gaps, and prepare contingency plans for future changes.

Use the work breakdown structure to delineate work and identify required human resources and skills. Start high level, then drill down to tasks for accurate staffing and resource estimation.

Apply a task skills analysis to map each task to required skills, detailing high level communication, stakeholder and financial skills alongside technical competencies, to inform recruitment and competency mapping.

Group work using WBS to map tasks to required skills and estimate effort in hours, using Excel for labor costs and staffing to support project costing.

Identify team skills by evaluating qualifications, currency, and industry recognition, then validate competencies through interviews, references, tests, and direct observation for project management readiness.

Identify and register staff competencies, verify licenses, track current skills in Excel, and map competencies to project tasks for targeted training programs in risk management and scheduling.

Learn to use RAM, the responsibility allocation matrix and resource assignment matrix, to map project tasks to roles, estimate hours, and identify gaps early in a project's scope.

Explore RAM version 2, a task-role framework using RACI or PARIS to assign accountable, responsible, consult, and inform roles, ensuring clear ownership and sign-offs.

Explore what truly motivates people in project work, identify individual drivers beyond money, and apply Herzberg's motivators and hygiene factors to boost team performance.

Foster collaboration by building an inclusive project environment that involves everyone, shares information, and uses divergent thinking to improve decision making and teamwork.

Foster culture alignment by setting ground rules and inclusive practices to boost collaboration, reduce friction, and keep the project moving.

Learn to cultivate a culture of open feedback by giving specific, actionable input focused on issues, with measurable, achievable, and time-bound goals and a collaborative action plan.

Explore the life cycle of teams in project management, detailing forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning, and how culture and early conflict shape reaching performing faster.

Define clear roles and responsibilities using a work breakdown structure to minimize overlap, ensure accountability, monitor changes, and align with scope management from day zero.

Learn how to define and measure performance using KPI targets and SMART objectives, align expectations with stakeholders, and monitor via performance management to drive business improvements.

Explore the four drivers of human performance—direction, opportunity, motivation, and ability—and learn to assess and improve your scores to boost daily productivity and personal development.

Assess human performance by diagnosing motivation, opportunity, direction, and ability to reduce rework and improve quality through clear goals, roadblock removal, and targeted training.

Explore coaching, mentoring, and training as practical ways to support project teams, set goals, build plans, and foster accountability and on-the-job learning.

Define clear outcomes and baselines to monitor work against plan, identify variances in scope, time, budget, and quality, and report them regularly to the client.

Define and monitor effort as the fraction of resources assigned to a task. Compare planned and actual duration and resources, and report hours to improve future estimations.

Identify and understand conflict as daily friction from differences in opinion, assumption, and expectation; increase awareness, collaborate, and apply lateral thinking to reach mutually beneficial outcomes.

Assess human resource management through continuous improvement, emphasizing regular informal performance management, baseline performance, smart criteria, and two-way feedback for actionable next-period gains.

Explore how 360 degree feedback expands the traditional review by including self-assessment, peers, and managers, producing a visual, multi-faceted view of competencies for targeted improvement.

Learn how lessons learned serve as a post-project analysis to capture skill gaps, training gaps, and opportunities, and share insights to improve future projects.