Megaproject team building

I'm preparing for a project management course. I remember analogies related to the project team. I'm going through old articles. Eureka! Quotes recorded four years ago from the book Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister. Successful Projects and Teams" not only retains its novelty, but also provides recipes for managing a team on the scale of a megaproject.

In the PMBOK project management standard, the team life cycle is stable for a whole decade and is easy to remember thanks to the rhyme "Forming-storming-norming and performing." Experts will also add "Disbanding" here when a project ends as planned or suddenly ends.

The megaproject management standard has not yet been written (by the way, PM Excellence experts are working on this), but it is obvious that the universal formula for team development, which is given above, needs to be clarified. Due to the long duration of a large-scale project, corporate interest in long-term hiring of employees. And also, perhaps, it is a good practice of some large Russian companies to respect and value human capital. I will give an example of the "White Book" of Norilsk Nickel.

Fig. 1 "White Paper" of the Norilsk Nickel company on human capital

From the "crystallization" of Tom, DeMarco, which he undoubtedly included in the life cycle of the team, built a couple more phases of development. My geological hobby helped. I got into the diamond alphabet and saw the curved evolution of natural diamonds, similar to the team-building cycle.

Fig.2 Crystal morphological evolution of natural diamond

I made analogies and added three additional (geological) phases to the team building formula for a large and megaproject:

Phase "Crystallization"
Phase "Diamonds without shell"
Phase "Diamond Cutting"

These phases are deciphered below in the mind map in familiar management terms.

Fig. 3 Key stages of a megaproject team

The topic of "diamonds" in corporate governance is not new. A beautiful story about optimizing business processes through geology is below, which confirms the success of the chosen terms. The Instrum-Rand company is from the small town of Pavlovo, Nizhny Novgorod region.

Fig.4 Logo of the Instrum-Rand company

It was one of the leading Russian manufacturers of pneumatic tools. The founders are the transnational corporation Ingersoll Rand (USA) and Pavlovsk OJSC Mekhinstrument. The company first entered the domestic market in 1993. But due to a sharp reduction in production in the country, there was almost no domestic demand. Then they decided, relying on their potential in the field of product quality, to bring it to the European level and took an order for the supply of steering columns for the Mercedes-Benz company. While undergoing certification for compliance with the German automotive standard VDA 6.1, the plant scored 92.8% out of 100. The loss rate was reduced from 65.9% in 1994 to 0.03 in December 2001.

How did they do it? The company's management was convinced that improving production processes was impossible without involving the entire team in finding ways to achieve this. A corresponding program was developed. First, it was necessary to achieve a change in the attitude of workers towards defects, their understanding of the value of a defective part for the company. Such a part carries information about failures in the technological chain, problems in the production process. And information is the most valuable thing for the plant, and therefore the new system for working with defects was called the "Diamond System". As a result, no one now hides the defective part, but takes it to the table for "diamonds", accompanied by a tag with his data and information about why, in his opinion, the defect turned out.

Such a worker is thanked and given a bonus for the fact that the part did not make it onto the conveyor. And management looks at where the plant loses the most and directs all efforts there to improve the quality of processes. After three years of operation of the Diamond system, the defect rate dropped to one percent.

The given stages of development of the megaproject team and the practical case of the Instrum-Rand company form the "diamond" theme of collective intelligence in the megaproject. The baton of the successful project, which gave the company not only sought-after results and products, will be picked up by the diamond super team, which will be engaged in operational post-project work. And it will do it no less successfully! The effect of team crystallization is designed for the life cycle of the company.

As a summary, adding a little to Mayakovsky:

Sources:

Demarco Tom, Lister Tim. "Peopleware. Successful projects and teams."
Beskrovanov V.V. Diamond ontology. Diamond alphabet. Science and technology in Yakutia No. 1 (22) 2012.
Bakardzhieva Svetlana. Bosses, become leaders. http://www.moscowuniversityclub.ru/home.asp?artId=6418.