Reference no: EM133279710

Assignment:

Project management case study 5th ed by Harold Kerner THE TEAM MEETING answer the following.

BACKGROUND

Every project team has team meetings. The hard part is deciding when during the day to have the meeting.

KNOW YOUR ENERGY CYCLE

Vince had been a morning person ever since graduating from college. He enjoyed getting up early. He knew his own energy cycle and that he was more productive in the morning than in the afternoon.

Vince would come into work at 6:00 a.m., two hours before the normal workforce would show up. Between 6:00 a.m. and noon, Vince would keep his office door closed and often would not answer the phone. Vince did this to prevent others from interrupting his most productive time. Vince considered time robbers such as unnecessary phone calls lethal to project success. This gave Vince six hours of productive time each day to do the necessary project work. After lunch, Vince would open his office door, and anyone could talk with him.

A TOUGH DECISION

Vince's energy cycle worked well, at least for him. But Vince had just become the project manager on a large project. Vince knew that he might have to sacrifice some of his precious morning time for team meetings. It was customary for each project team to have a weekly team meeting, and most project team meetings seemed to be held in the morning.

Initially, Vince decided to go against tradition and hold team meetings between 2:00 and 3:00 p.m. This would allow him to keep his precious morning time for his own productive work. During the afternoon team meeting, Vince was somewhat disturbed when there was very little discussion on some critical issues and people appeared to be looking at their watches. Finally, Vince understood the problem. A large portion of his team members were manufacturing personnel who started work as early as 5:00 a.m. The manufacturing personnel were ready to go home at 2:00 p.m. and were tired.

The following week Vince changed the team meeting time to 11:00 to 12:00 noon. It was evident to him that he had to sacrifice some of his morning time. But once again, during the team meetings, there really wasn't very much discussion about some critical issues on the project, and the manufacturing personnel were looking at their watches. Vince was disappointed. As he exited the conference room, one of the manufacturing personnel commented to him, "Don't you know that the manufacturing people usually go to lunch around 11:00 a..m.?"

Vince came up with a plan for the next team meeting. He sent out e-mails to all team members stating that the meeting would be at 11:00 to 12:00 noon, as before, but the project would pick up the cost for providing lunch in the form of pizzas and salads. Much to Vince's surprise, this worked well. The atmosphere in the team meeting improved significantly. There were meaningful discussions and decisions were being made instead of creating action items for future team meetings.

It suddenly became an informal rather than a formal team meeting. Although Vince's project could certainly incur the cost of pizzas, salads, and soft drinks for team meetings, this might set a bad precedent if this would happen at each team meeting. At the next team meeting, the team decided that it would be nice if the pizza lunches could happen once or twice a month. It was decided to leave the time for the team meetings the same at 11:00 to 12:00 noon, but team members would bring their own lunches, and the project would provide soft drinks and perhaps some cookies or brownies.

QUESTIONS

1. How should a project manager determine when (i.e., time of day) to hold a team meeting? What factors should be considered?

2. What mistakes did Vince make initially?

3. If you were an executive in this company, would you allow Vince to continue having pizza at team meetings?