[Project Management] How PM assigns tasks to team members (reproduced)

Author's original article, original source please visit: http://blog.csdn.net/yihui823/article/details/6778351

Remember to be PM for the first time. That was the project that took over. The original PM took over another important project after the project requirement analysis. At that time, I and the other two leaders naturally became candidates to take over the PM. Finally, the original PM chose me as his successor. At that time, my biggest headache was how I assigned tasks to the other two group leaders. The previous day, we were still discussing issues on a level. Now it's my turn to assign them jobs.

As time went by, I was overwhelmed at the time, and now I am very comfortable with myself, and I am confused in the middle. An article yesterday introduced that the project manager needs to allocate tasks reasonably, and some people asked, "It is easy to say that there will be various problems in the actual task arrangement. I will summarize my experiences in this area today.

Before summing up, we should be modest. Management is different from the mathematics we learn. There is a standard answer to mathematics. 1 + 1 is equal to 2. There is no discussion. But in management, I think there is no answer. Everyone has their own management philosophy, management style, and management means. You can only say which one is better or worse, but you cannot say who is right or wrong. What can achieve the management goal, I think, is good and feasible. What I wrote here is my own summary, hoping to help you.

I think task allocation can be analyzed from several aspects.

First, it is the PM stage. 1. Initial Stage

At the beginning of doing pm, assigning tasks is often limited to the following mentality: We used to work in the same level, and now I am a level higher than them, will they listen to what I said.

I think this is a human heart. At this stage, PM lacks self-confidence and prestige in the hearts of the team members. When assigning tasks to PM, I feel endless. If at this time, the team members say something different from the PM idea and talk about some of their own opinions, the PM will often misunderstand that this is not self-satisfied, but it is difficult to allocate their own resources. At this time, we often suffer from the PM. Under the leadership of a lack of self-confidence pm, the team members will naturally feel down. Some team members will not express their own opinions to avoid embarrassment. Some team members will deliberately embarrass the PM in their own ways to reduce their work.

Here I can talk about my situation at that time. I asked the other two team leaders in the tone of discussion when assigning tasks. For example, "how do you do this ?" The other two leaders are also experienced experts who often say a few words. So I thought I could not manage them, so I ran to ask my leaders for advice. My leadership did not say much, that is, asking them to have a meal and reimburse the meal company.

For the first time, I was hesitant to do so. When I was eating, I was still thinking about what I wanted to say, but I didn't say anything. The dinner ended in a relaxed atmosphere. I felt that they were not as hostile to me as I thought.

In the subsequent Task Arrangement, when they expressed their different opinions, I began to summon the courage to argue with them. I boldly think out my own ideas. I was surprised to find that as long as I spoke about my considerations, they basically listened to me.

What did I actually get from this meal? I thought twice later, and the biggest achievement I got was self-confidence! I didn't reimburse the meal for that meal. I think it's worth a few hundred dollars.

Therefore, in the initial phase of PM, the biggest obstacle to task allocation is self-confidence!

As long as you are confident enough, you can solve all the "face" problems. It is your responsibility to assign tasks. As long as you have enough confidence, you can give the team members enough confidence to make them feel that they can succeed with you.

As for how to build your self-confidence, everyone can have a different approach. Maintain a good private relationship with the team members or say something to them. At the project initiation meeting, if senior leaders give some encouragement, it will also bring a lot of confidence to PM.

Self-confidence is the biggest obstacle, not the only one. After self-confidence is built, there are still many things to pay attention to and learn. However, the premise is self-confidence.

2. Improvement stage

After PM solves the self-confidence problem, it is likely to come to another extreme. This is not necessarily true for everyone. It is related to character. Another aspect of self-confidence is self-confidence. PM often starts to increase confidence after it passes through the initial stage of self-confidence. People with relatively strong rights tend to be self-centered. At this time, the voice of task allocation is imperative. For example, "you must give it to me the day after work, no matter how you do it ".

High self-confidence is often harmful to the project team. Although he can make the team members highly concentrated, their creativity will be suppressed. The software industry is highly creative, rather than simply cramming factory jobs. PM is no longer familiar with implementation details. Imperative task scheduling often prevents team members from expressing their own ideas and opinions. In this way, the problem will be exposed at the end, which often brings more trouble to the project.

At this stage, it is still difficult for PM to recognize their own responsibilities. Maybe I have suffered several losses, maybe I have been criticized by the leaders, maybe I have read many books. In short, as experience grows, I will gradually overcome this obstacle, otherwise, this will become a bottleneck for personal growth.

3. Deployment

After two stages of self-esteem and self-confidence, PM basically has no psychological barriers in assigning tasks. At this time, you need to hone your skills to make it easy. This is not much to say.

 

Secondly, the character of the team members.

Management is an art. Different means are often used to get twice the result with half the effort. The team members have different personalities. It is still a bit skillful to make them accept their assigned tasks, especially difficult tasks.

Although each person has a different character, but not two people with the same character, they can still be roughly classified. I have heard of a classification method before when I received training, which is of great practical significance and will be of great help to my subsequent work. We will introduce you here.

A person's character can be roughly divided into four categories, each of which is represented by an animal.

1. Peacock

People of this type love to show and show the limelight. Naturally, they also love to praise. People with such personalities should be less criticized and praised as much as possible. They are often willing to accept the difficult tasks you have arranged. This kind of character is very fast and vigorous, but it is generally rough. This should be noted when assigning tasks.

2. Aries

This type of personality is introverted and does not like to speak more. It is more emotional than rational, and has a strong sense of inner defense. While caring for them, opening jokes and eliminating gaps is a good way to reduce their hostility. If you want to assign difficult tasks to them, it is best to first ask them if they have any difficulties. People of this kind of character do things diligently. As long as they accept the tasks, they will not disappoint you.

3. Owl

Calm, strong analytical capabilities, data sensitivity, and extremely rational thinking are characteristics of the owl's character. "Convince people" is the best key to interacting with people of this character. If you can convince the owls, they will help you a lot and help you calmly analyze various problems. If you add a series of data in your remarks, such as how many people and months our project needs to be controlled, you need to control the bug rate to the level of one thousand lines, the owls will appreciate you and naturally cooperate with your work.

4. Eagles

A natural leader, a brave man, is not afraid of difficulties. He prefers to accept challenging tasks. When talking to such people, you don't need to talk about details, because they don't care about details. You need to have an ambitious goal, a ambitious ambition, and a demonstration of how you want to lead everyone to achieve this goal. For such a person, you must be very confident, because they like strong people, even if you use their power to "bully" them, they will accept. You don't have to worry that the tasks you give them are too difficult for them to accept, but you just have to worry that they cannot do the tasks they get. It's not that they are too lazy to do it, but that they are generally not technical experts.

Although each project team member can be differentiated by personality classification, it is necessary to analyze the specific situation and master it flexibly. After all, everyone's thoughts are different.

Finally, it is the atmosphere of project group cooperation.

This is indeed a good method for Agile programming. List all current tasks, and then each person receives them. This can greatly mobilize the enthusiasm of the project team members. However, this method also needs to be dialectical.

1. Initial team Establishment

If it is a project team, the members are not familiar with each other, or even some people are separated. At this time, it is no different to let everyone get the task by themselves. Everyone is wary and resistant to the project team, and everyone is afraid of their own mistakes. Everyone is afraid that others will be rewarded if they do less. Even Everyone worries about the lack of PM capabilities and the inability to work together to complete the project. When collecting tasks, everyone tries their best to make it easier. when problems arise, they will try their best to shirk their responsibilities.

At this time, PM can be very powerful or even very independent. I remember watching a movie where a general was the captain of the first nuclear submarine and all the crew members were put together on a temporary basis. In his speech before departure, the captain said, "You must listen to me. Without me, you have nothing to do. Of course, I have nothing without you ." This strong attitude quickly allows each crew member to find their own position and clarify their responsibilities. In fact, this Captain's practice is very humane, but in the initial stage of team formation, humanization sometimes has a reaction to team building.

Therefore, in this period, we should try to assign tasks as the main task, and follow up the progress of task completion at any time to adjust the task allocation at any time. To assign a task, you must pay attention to the methods and make it clear. Otherwise, the team members may have resistance or negative emotions.

2. Team Cooperation Period

After the lack of mutual trust at the initial stage of the team establishment, the team should have entered a transitional period. At this time, it is time for members to understand each other and establish mutual trust. At this time, it has been very good to let everyone get their own tasks, but the monitoring is indispensable. It is impossible for the team members to cooperate with each other, and they will not be allocated according to their respective advantages and disadvantages. They may be able to receive tasks based on their interests and interests. Some boring, difficult, and tasteless tasks will be taken away by people who are unwilling to speak and dislike the limelight. Those activists, they will first get some interesting tasks that they find interesting, even if they are not good at themselves. If there is little difference between tasks, there is basically no problem in this period of time when you receive the tasks on your own. However, if the difference between tasks is large, the PM is not controlled, and there will be many problems during the synchronization period. Configuration cannot be optimized. People who do not want to talk will feel unfair when they receive bad tasks, but they are unwilling to express them, naturally, the work efficiency will be reduced, and the mutual trust of the team will also be affected.

Therefore, during the running-in period, the PM must be involved and make some fine-tuning when assigning tasks in the way the team members receive their own tasks. This fine-tuning should be well-founded and convincing. If you still assign a task, the pressure on the PM will be much lower, because the initial formation of the team, the assigned task, the team members will be more easily accepted. At this stage, PM can encourage everyone to think independently and make group decisions to reduce their "dictatorship" position in the project team and make efforts to enter the third stage.

At this stage, the most worrying thing is the "Mouse. As the Chinese saying goes, a drop of mouse shit breaks down a pot of porridge. In Western management, there are also "Bad apple" theories. That is to say, a person's products, personalities, and values are incompatible with the team. At this time, they will be very destructive to team building. A lot of things need to be done by everyone. If you don't do things, the team cannot handle them spontaneously, which will bring great psychological impact to other members of the team.

For example. Project Manager A said during the meeting on Monday that we need to modify the interface of the Framework. First, a defines the interface function. The original interface function remains for one week, the original interface will be deleted next week. In this week, you will gradually change the call of the old interface to the new interface. Obviously, if you do not change the interface call to a new function next Monday, the compilation will fail. There was just one buddy who could not change it for a week. As a result, the code could not be compiled after the code was updated on the next Monday. Then the buddy quickly spent a half-day modifying the interface, and then tossing it over. Project Team of 10 people, 5 person days, 0.25 person months.

If PM does not deal with this person, the rest of the team members will be in a bad mood. Why is it that he is lazy? This has caused so many losses to everyone and is not handled yet. The shirking of responsibilities and mutual wrangling of the Team will gradually spread. when it is too late, PM will get angry again.

Therefore, in the running-in stage, you must promptly discover the "Mouse" and immediately handle it. Do not be a good person. It is unfair to activists. If the "rat" has not been improved for many times, it is better not. Don't worry that if there are fewer project team members, it will fail to complete the task, because if there is one more "Mouse", the side effects on the team will be greater, and the loss will not be worth the candle.

3. Project integration period

An optimal project cooperation. Members of the team understand and trust each other. Everyone is willing to make suggestions for the project team. Everyone knows their position and responsibilities in the project, and they will "fill in" in time ". Once a problem occurs somewhere, each Member will automatically share the consequences of the problem. At this stage, PM does not require too many intervention tasks, and the entire team is an organic whole.

At this time, you can submit the task to the team members to separate the tasks themselves. The role of PM in this project group is to report to customers and to leaders. In internal management, PM has nothing to do, so you can get a few tasks that you are good.

It seems very fascinating to say that I have taken a project team and it is at the end of this realm. When a large task comes, I just need to clarify the task, and the team members will analyze it themselves, and then start to list the decomposed tasks. Then, the tasks are automatically paired to complete. Once a team member finds a problem that was not considered at the time, the Members will convene the meeting and re-share the task. In this project, I solved a few practical problems and spent more time communicating with the customer and reporting to the leadership, but in very rare cases, I did some internal management. Of course, in some milestones, I still need to guide the project direction. After all, the PM experience is still valuable.