MANAGING
PROJECTS
IN HUMAN
RESOURCES,
TRAINING AND
DEVELOPMENT
Vivien Martin
Vivien Martin
MANAGING PROJECTS
IN HUMAN
RESOURCES, TRAINING
AND DEVELOPMENT
London and Philadelphia
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Setting clear objectives 11
Key dimensions of a project 12
People in projects 14
Projects in HR, training and development 15
Outcomes and multiple outcomes 16
Achieving outcomes 17
2. Scoping the project 19
Why scope a project? 20
The life of a project 21
3. Questions, evidence and decisions 29
Does this project meet a need? 29
Figures and tables vii
Acknowledgements viii
Does it help to achieve organizational goals? 32
Have we considered all the options? 32
Option appraisal 34
Cost-effectiveness 35
Opportunities and threats 35
Is this project feasible? 36
Should we do a pilot study? 39
Is the benefit worth the cost? 41
4. Defining the project 45
Working with the sponsor 45
Will the project be supported? 47
Stakeholder mapping 49
Working with your stakeholders 52
Creating the project brief 54
Structure of the project brief 56
5. Managing risk 59
Risk and contingency planning 59

Team structure 108
Planning team responsibilities 110
Making it happen 111
Resourcing 112
Managing project activities during implementation 112
Keeping an overview 114
10. Monitoring and control 117
Monitoring 118
Milestones 121
Maintaining balance 122
Controlling change 124
11. Communications 125
Communications in a project 125
Why is good communication needed? 127
How can communication be provided? 128
Managing the flow of information 129
Providing information for those who need it 130
Where is information needed? 135
Access to information and confidentiality 136
What might hinder communication? 137
12. Leadership and teamworking 139
The nature of leadership 139
Leadership in a project 140
Power in leadership of projects 141
Style in leadership of projects 143
Leadership roles in a project 144
Motivation and teamworking 146
Team development 147
Managing yourself 150
13. Managing people and performance 151

Understanding your audience 191
Who is in your audience? 192
Purpose and content 193
Delivery 195
17. Learning from the project 199
Organizational learning about management of projects 199
Sharing learning from a project 202
Individual development from a project 204
Management development through leading a project 205
vi
Contents
References 209
Index 211
Figures and tables
FIGURES
2.1 A project life cycle 21
6.1 Logic diagram for directory production 77
8.1 A Gantt chart to design a new assessment centre 99
8.2 Critical path for relocation of an office 103
10.1 A simple project control loop 119
TABLES
5.1 Risk probability and impact 64
5.2 Format for a risk register 66
5.3 Stakeholder analysis, stage 1 67
5.4 Stakeholder analysis, stage 2 68
7.1 Work breakdown structure for implementation of a new
appraisal system 89
8.1 Part of the work breakdown structure for relocation of
101
8.2 Time estimates for relocation of an office 102

to know. There is likely to be more interest in whether the project will present
any sort of disruption or change, and if so, what the benefits will be.
In considering the timing of information releases it is also important to
consider what preparation is necessary to deal with reactions and responses.
Large and powerful organizations can appear to be concealing planned
changes if they do not offer information about plans until it is very obvious
to everyone that changes are in progress. If it is possible, it is usually helpful
to prepare information, perhaps in the form of press releases, to give to local
community and media representatives. Sometimes a public meeting is appre-
ciated so that anyone with concerns can raise them at an early stage. Remem-
ber that the staff of any organization involved in the project are likely to be
the best ambassadors, but they may give out a very poor impression if they
134
Managing projects in human resources
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
The chapters are arranged roughly in the order of things that you need to
consider when managing a project. Unfortunately, however, projects do not
often progress neatly through one logical stage after another. If you are man-
aging a project for the first time you might find it useful to glance through
the overview of chapters and note the issues that are raised so that you can
plan how to make best use of the book to support your own learning needs.
Projects come in many different shapes and sizes, and some of the tech-
niques and processes described here will seem unnecessary for small projects.
In some cases, the processes can be reduced or carried out more informally
when a project is not too large or complicated, but beware of missing out
essential basic thinking. The chapter on scoping a project, and that about
developing the evidence base, focus on making sure that the project has a
clear and appropriate aim and enough support to achieve its purpose. Many
projects founder because they are set up quickly to address issues that people
feel are very urgent, and the urge to take action means that the ideas are not

Some of the features that are common to any project are identified and their
importance discussed. There is an emphasis on clarifying the purpose of the
project and setting clear aims and objectives. The chapter concludes with a
consideration of the outcomes that are to be achieved.
Chapter 2 Scoping the project
This considers what is included in the project and where the boundaries lie.
One of the most commonly used models of project management is introduced
and used to help to clarify the choices to be made.
Chapter 3 Questions, evidence and decisions
It is often tempting to move straight into planning a project once an idea has
been enthusiastically received. This chapter encourages you to check, from a
number of different perspectives, whether there is any evidence that the
project is likely to succeed. The focus is on questioning whether the project
is worth doing and whether it will be able to achieve what it is intended to
do. Option appraisal is discussed and the potential benefits of carrying out a
pilot study are considered.
Chapter 4 Defining the project
The focus here is on developing a detailed project brief that will be signed off
by the person responsible for funding the project and supported by all the
key stakeholders in the project.
Chapter 5 Managing risk
This offers an approach to management of risk and contingency planning.
Risk is inevitable in a project and it would be impossible to achieve anything
without exposing ourselves to some degree of risk. The chapter covers risk
Introduction
3
assessment and impact analysis and suggests some strategies for dealing
with risk.
Chapter 6 Outline planning
Where do you start? Some straightforward approaches to developing a

the balance of time, cost and quality.
Chapter 11 Communications
This focuses on the need for effective communications in a project and the
things that a project manager can do to provide appropriate systems. Much
of the communication in a project is in connection with sharing information.
Management of the flow of information is considered alongside a reminder
of the responsibility of the project manager in ensuring that confidentialities
are respected.
Chapter 12 Leadership and teamworking
After some comment on the nature of leadership, this chapter focuses on
leadership issues in a project. Leadership and teamworking are closely linked
and motivation is also considered.
Chapter 13 Managing people and performance
One of the things that a project manager can do in the early stages of a project
is to prepare for good performance. It is much easier to manage performance
to ensure that the project is successful if the performance requirements have
been made specific and the staff have been adequately prepared. If the worst
happens and a manager has to deal with poor performance, it is essential to
have policies and procedures in place to ensure that the actions taken are
legal and fair to the individuals concerned.
Chapter 14 Completing the project
The implementation of a project ends with completion, but there are often a
number of outcomes with elements that have to be handed over to the project
sponsor. There are choices about how these things are delivered. There are
also a number of steps to take in ensuring that a project is closed properly so
that any remaining resources are accounted for and all of the contractual
relationships have been concluded.
Chapter 15 Evaluating the project
Most projects end with an evaluation and it often falls to the project manager
to design and plan the process. This chapter outlines the process and ends

of the factors that contribute to successful completion of projects.
PROJECTS AND CHANGE
Projects at work can be of many different types. Some may be short term, for
example, organizing a special event, making a major purchase or moving an
office. Or they may be bigger, longer and involve more people – for example,
a project that involves developing a new service or a new function or moving
a service area to a new location. The project may be expected to deliver an
improvement to services, for example programmes and courses, or products,
for example training materials or CD ROMs. It may be expected to deliver
financial benefits to the organization in some way. In the public sector,
projects are normally expected to lead to social, economic and political
outcomes.
Projects contribute to the management of change. However, change man-
agement usually refers to substantial organizational change that might
include many different types of change in many different areas of work, while
project management usually refers to one specific aspect of the change. There-
fore, projects are often distinct elements in wider organizational change.
Example 1.1
A project as part of change management
A large hospital was merging with a smaller community healthcare
organization that offered a range of services in local surgeries, and
through home visits to patients. The development of the new merged
organization was a long and complex process, but there were a num-
ber of projects identified that contributed to achieving change. These
included:
࿖
development of new personnel policies;
࿖
relocation of directorate offices;
࿖

As in any activity within an organization, there are constraints which limit
the process in various ways. For example, policies and procedures may con-
strain the ways in which things are done. The outcomes that are required may
be defined very precisely, and measures may be put in place to ensure that
the outcomes conform to the specified requirements. Once a project has been
defined it is possible to estimate the resources that will be needed to achieve
the desired outcomes within the desired time. A project is usually expected
to achieve outcomes that will only be required once, and so projects are not
normally repeated. Even if a pilot project is set up to try out an idea, the
outcome from the pilot should achieve what was required without the need
to conduct another pilot project (unless different ideas are subsequently to
be explored). Working on a project is not like ongoing everyday work pro-
cesses unless all your work is focused through project working.
PAUSE FOR THOUGHT
Which of the following activities would you consider to be projects?
Yes No
(a) Developing a new, documented induction
procedure
❏❏
(b) Establishing a jointly agreed protocol to
review the quality provided by a new
cleaning service
❏❏
(c) Maintaining client records for a home
delivery service
❏❏
(d) Managing staff rotas ❏❏
(e) Transferring client records from a card file
to a new computer system
❏❏

outcome in terms of how it should be achieved. It can also identify any
important aspects of the outcome that relate to the values of the organization.
Aims can express a vision and describe a purpose, but clear objectives provide
the details that describe how the aim will be achieved.
10
Managing projects in human resources
SETTING CLEAR OBJECTIVES
It is very important to set clear objectives because these describe exactly what
you are aiming to achieve and will provide the only way to know whether
you have succeeded or not. It is often easy to agree the broad goals of the
project, but these need to be translated into objectives if they are to be used
to plan the project and to guide the assessment of whether it has achieved
what was intended.
Objectives are clear when they define what is to be achieved, say when that
is to be completed and explain how everyone will know that the objective has
been achieved. Many people use the word SMART to remind themselves of
the areas to consider when setting clear objectives:
࿖
Specific – clearly defined with completion criteria.
࿖
Measurable – you will know when they have been achieved.
࿖
Achievable – within the current environment and with the skills that are
available.
࿖
Realistic – not trying to achieve the impossible.
࿖
Timebound – limited by a completion date.
If you write objectives that include all these aspects, you will have described
what has to be done to achieve the objectives. This makes objectives a very

that staff use the new procedures.
There will usually be a number of objectives to complete in order to achieve
the goals of a project. These objectives can be grouped into clusters that lead
to completion of different parts of the project. Objectives are important in two
ways in a project: they identify exactly what has to be done, and they allow
you to establish whether or not each objective has been achieved.
The objectives that you set in the early stages of the project provide a
framework for the final evaluation. They also provide information that will
help you to monitor the progress of the project so that it can be controlled
and managed.
KEY DIMENSIONS OF A PROJECT
There are three key dimensions to a project:
࿖
budget;
࿖
time;
࿖
quality.
These have to be balanced to manage a project successfully. A successfully
completed project would finish on time, within the estimated budget and
12
Managing projects in human resources
having achieved all of the quality requirements. These three dimensions of
budget, time and quality are often regarded as the aspects of a project that
must be kept in an appropriate balance if the project is to achieve a successful
outcome. The job of the person leading or managing the project is to keep a
balance that enables all of these dimensions to be managed effectively.
These dimensions are in tension with each other, and any action taken that
is focused on one of the dimensions will impact on both of the others. For
example, if a reduction is made in the budget, there might be an impact on

PEOPLE IN PROJECTS
Although this model of three dimensions helps us to keep an overview of
projects, another crucial dimension to keep in mind is the involvement of
people in projects. People are central to every aspect of a project. People
commission and sponsor projects, agree to provide resources, support or
challenge projects, and contribute their energy and intelligence to carry out
projects. People take roles in delivering projects as leaders, managers and
team members, and others influence projects as sponsors, stakeholders, men-
tors, coaches and expert advisors. With so many people involved, projects
are strongly influenced by how these people feel and talk about the project
and how people behave in relation to the project.
Example 1.4
A project sensitive to people
A consultancy service was commissioned by a large organization to
provide a development programme for senior managers. Many staff
thought that participation would influence promotion decisions, so
the project was very sensitive in terms of how people would be se-
lected to be participants in the programme. Other roles also needed
to be considered, including who would present elements of the pro-
gramme and who would support participants as line managers or
mentors. As the ultimate purpose of the project was to improve the
organization’s products and services, some involvement from cus-
tomers was important. There was also interest from the press and
from several professional bodies and trade unions.
In this project the extensive range of interests was managed by de-
signing each aspect of the project with involvement of people with
particular interests and concerns. A competence framework for senior
managers aspiring to directorships was developed through consulta-
tion with all the organization’s directors. Senior managers and pro-
fessionals were also interviewed to develop a competence framework

and that people need to be rewarded for their work and to be motivated to
want to work. There is also similarity in the expectations that employers have
of employees, particularly the expectation that employees will produce the
outcomes that the employer is paying them to achieve – although in some
sectors and organizations, these expectations seem to change frequently.
Project management is a relatively recent approach to management. It is a
particularly effective approach to gaining management control, and enables
a focus on use of resources to gain specific objectives. It does, however,
require different organizational structures:
The rapid rate of change in both technology and the marketplace has
created enormous strains on existing organizational forms. The tradi-
tional structure is highly bureaucratic, and experience has shown that
it cannot respond rapidly enough to a changing environment. Thus the
traditional structure must be replaced by project management, or other
What is a project?
15
temporary management structures that are highly organic and can
respond very rapidly as situations develop inside and outside the
company.
(Kerzner, 2003: 2)
HR management approaches have also developed in the context of large,
relatively stable bureaucratic and hierarchical organizational structures. If a
significant amount of an organization’s work is managed through project
structures there are implications for how staff are recruited, inducted, devel-
oped and managed. Projects are usually short-term, focused, un-hierarchical
and operate under considerable time pressure. This makes it difficult to use
the traditional approaches to bring recruits into the workplace and to develop
and manage their performance.
OUTCOMES AND MULTIPLE OUTCOMES
A project is usually intended to achieve at least one distinct outcome. For