Best practice in ERP Project Team Formation

There are particular challenges associated with forming a project team – certainly you need to be sure that all of your team have the required competencies to do the job – and also that the person will be able to work well in the different challenge of a project environment compared to the usual daily operational environment. But you also need to ensure that anybody you choose will fit well within the team that you have in mind in order to have an effective team culture.

But you also have the additional challenge regarding what procedures to follow in order to make a good hire – the Harvard Business Review says that “employers have only about a 14% likelihood of making a good hire based on an average interview”. But it is also true that good choice make a difference – research shows that in highly complex jobs (such as a project manager) the output of a superior performer was 48% greater than an average performer. So what steps must you take to get the choice right?

Best practice in the area of selection of ERP project team members incorporates the following steps:

• Determine the required competencies for the project role (ideally benchmarked against best–practice)
• Assess likely performance against job competencies via a combination of a trained HR Assessment and/or psychometric tests (particularly for roles where the candidate does not have the opportunity to demonstrate the competency in existing role)
• Complete as much screening as possible before calling the candidate for interview
• Complete competency-based behavioural interviewing (i.e. asking questions about how job applicants have fulfilled the competency in the past)
• Identify fit of individual against project team culture.

The benefits associated with this approach are:

• It provides a scientific and objective assessment method supplementing other sources of data about a candidate;
• Identifies potential development needs of individuals involved in moving from operational to project environment; and
• Identifies potential issues associated with building an effective project team.

Making good decisions on project team members can help significantly to build effective teams – and increase the likelihood that you will deliver projects on time and on budget together with optimising business benefits.

This blog post was written by Sean Jackson, Principal Consultant at Lumenia. If you would like further information on ERP Project Team Formation or any aspect of ERP Change Management please send an e-mail to Sean Jackson.