Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook

6.

The People

Sponsorship, Resources, Stakeholders

Projects don’t exist without people. People’s competencies and behavior are among the main drivers of successful project management. The emotional and individual expectations of team members and key stakeholders must be addressed to bring about the best in them. Across the project life cycle, engagement levels of individual team members should be monitored. Today, virtual project teams, often not colocated, are commonplace. In this environment, project managers and executive sponsors must well understand behavior, emotions, and culture. The people domain covers three building blocks that are connected by the human factor (figure 6-1):

FIGURE 6-1

The people domain

• Sponsorship: the conduit ...