New Project Team Member – The Elephant in the Room
It often happens that a project team member (PTM) is replaced for several reasons. What is not generally understood is that the addition of new PTM comes with its own risks. The new project team member may become the elephant in the room that needs to be managed skillfully. Otherwise, performance or even the project objectives may be jeopardized.
This becomes even more critical if the new team member has a different work style; tends to work in isolation, hardly communicating with the rest of the team.
Of course, changes in the project team, as the project progresses, is normal and should be expected because the composition of the team at any given point in time should reflect the actual needs of the project. The completion of project tasks renders the skills and competencies of some team members redundant while outstanding tasks may require a different set of skills.
Accordingly, Eskerod and Blichfeldt, Danish professors of project management, asset that the main project management challenge posed by this change is the need to maintain team cohesion, necessary for enhanced team performance, while taking the new entrant on board.
Generally, changes in project team composition, either by the exit of a team member or the entrance of a new member, introduces risks to the project team. These risks, according to the Project Management Body of Knowledge Guide (PMBOK), may be positive, in that they enhance project performance or negative, in that they have deleterious effects on project performance.
Thus, the entrance of a new team member should not be taken lightly. A team member whose profile is different from that of the rest of the team may introduce a number of risks, including the following:
- Conflict
Sources of conflicts in the project environment include differences in work style as well as what Dr. Paul Sanghera calls “perceptions, values and emotions, and power struggles”. Usually, the evolution of the project team through the Tuckman’s stages of team development – forming, storming, norming and performing – addresses these risks, and enhances team performance. Team members get to understand themselves and their work styles, prejudices etc. over time. However, the entrance of a new team member midway into project execution might upset existing team cohesion, necessitating the repeat of the team development process.
This reminds me of a situation in one of my previous project teams. The team had been formed and team development, including team building events, had been completed. The team was already raving away with the project when one of the team leaders was replaced with a new one. The replacement turned out to be a self-conceited, power-hungry fellow who came fighting virtually everybody, including the project manager. He generated so much conflict that he had to be removed to save both the team and the project.
- Communication Problems
The new PTM brings peculiar risks to the project team if he happens to be one who tends to work alone. This is essentially a communication problem that could result in frustrations and inefficiencies in relationships within the team.
This is a very dangerous situation as the project team may not know the state of the deliverables that he is responsible for. This may lead to surprises and people may be impacted at the last minute.
An even more dangerous dimension would occur if he heads off in the wrong direction, as much damage would be done before the project manager and the team discover it.
Imagine a programmer, who for curious reasons misunderstood the client’s requirements and heads off working on the wrong solutions for weeks without informing anybody!
A similar situation played out in one of our project teams. A project engineer for one scope item kept everyone in the dark. He reported every week that the project was on track. But the project manager was suspicious. Once he went on vacation, the project manager sent yours truly to audit the project. The result was staggering! Not only was the project way behind schedule, the contractor was in financial distress!
- Set Back to the Team
All team members may be affected by the change in the composition of the project team. Consequently, such changes may even lead to the project team being set back to earlier phases of team development, as mentioned above.
In fact, the entrance of the new team member can so offset team cohesion that the team may have to be taken through the processes of forming, storming and norming again to recover the stage of performing.
In one of my previous projects the client had requested the replacement of the planning engineer, a key member of the project team. One of my recommendations after the interview of the replacement was to take the new team member through a very gradual process of on-boarding to ensure that his entrance did not constitute a setback to the project team and project progress.
In conclusion, I would like to reiterate that changes in the composition of the project team during project execution is normal and should be expected. This may be informed by the need to optimize resource usage. However, the introduction of a new team member midway in the life of the project may introduce both negative and positive risks to the project. Some of the negative risks include conflicts due to differences in work styles, communication problems, or team cohesion may be so badly affected that the team is set back to earlier stages of team development.
It is, therefore, important that the project manager recognizes this as a key part of team management. Team management, according to the PMBOK, is the process of tracking team member performance, providing feedback, resolving issues, and managing changes to optimize project performance. The key benefit of this process is that it influences team behavior, manages conflict, and resolves issues. This process is performed throughout the life of the project.
