Understanding the 3 Factors to improve the Project Team sizing

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about how to make a better project team sizing according to three factors: the complexity and geographic dispersion of the work to be done and the team's maturity.

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Episode transcript

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Hello everybody welcome to the five minutes BM podcast today. We like to discuss with you about teen sizing. How I can decide about the size of my Team. It's a very important, we understand how sys is important because there's a lot of misperception around sizing. And I we like to share with you three topics that I think you need to, and to support you decide of how many people do I need to do the work.

The first one is the complexity, but not only the project management complexity, I'm talking about technical complexity. So if you are doing something, there is a high tech, new technology, a new tool Zuora in a very distant place. You need to have maybe more people to feel this specific knowledge. It's very hard for us to find someone with a deep knowledge in several different things.

So most of the time we need to fill this by different people, and this will require a bigger team. So I don't have, for example, if I'm building a nuclear power plant, I can not think that one person will be enough to do all the sizing or all the calculations regarding power or regarding security. It's a very complex environment. So I need a lot of people to fulfill this.

So complexity is one big factor. The other one is dispersion, geographic dispersion. So if I'm doing a project that is base it in one floor, everybody together, it will require may be less people. But my project is completely spread out into many different places, many different the facility's this will add the need for more people, because until now we don't have technology to transport us instantaneously from one place to a lot or so, what we need to do, we need to have maybe an overlap of people to make sure that we are covering all this geographic dimension off our project.

The third one is maturity. If I have a lower maturity among the people working with me, I potentially all need more people Xactly for the same reason for the complexity, because the people without the sufficient maturity, they are not able to handle bigger pieces, soft work. So we need to direct them in a very specific way with their risk specific deliverables and tasks, because they don't have maturity yet assemble several different tasks, cause at the same time.

So if I have a more senior group, it will requires me less people. If I have a more junior group, it will require more people to do the same work. This is obvious, and this will drive me to one big comment that and to share about the size. And a lot of people relate size with power. So, or if I have a lot of people working for me in my Project means my project is important.

No, it, this is not the case. This is not the case. If you have a lot of people with low qualification doing a very basic and very operational work, this doesn't transform your project in the relevant project. Maybe someone else with a very small team in the meeting room can produce more relevant work in the, what will happen and what is relevant and important regarding a project. He is the business case, what you were really driving in their organization.

What kind of strategic benefit are you driving to the government, to the organization or to whoever contracts, you know, you to do a project management. It's very, very important that you understand that it's not size, it's not sized. If you had a hundred of junior people, very junior that are not able to deliver more complex stuff. And in the order size or the group has a very small, very high qualified doing a very high end project that is completely attach it to the strategic intent of the organization.

This project, despite having far much less people, we'll be much more relevant for the organization. Don't do that same mistake. A lot of people think that they become more powerful as they have more people. This doesn't make too much sense. It's much more relevant than you. We have the right people to do the work and the work you were doing. Also, if it's relevant than you will have the power for that, it's very important.

The power is attached to the relevance of what you do for the organization and not the size of the team. You manage a think about that. See you next week with another five minutes to be on podcasts.

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Understanding the 3 Factors to improve the Project Team sizing

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