Acquiring your project team is all about bringing team members onto your project team. The PMP Certification Exam will ask questions about this important process. This can include internal and external resources. Of course, if you are using external resources, you will need to follow your procurement management plan.
Acquire Project Team. Confirming human resource availability and obtaining the team necessary to complete project activities.
The PMP exam assumes that you’re working on a large project. For a large project, you would have a core group of people helping to plan the project. After the plans are finalized, you bring on the hundreds of resources needed to complete the work. In other words, you would staff the team as part of executing the project.
Obviously, for a small project, the group responsible for planning the work would also be doing the work, so acquiring the team would occur very early in the planning phase.
Think back to the information you put together for your human resource management plan. This is where much of that information will be used. The main components of the human resource management plan are
Roles and responsibilities: This component of the human resource management plan documents the role, authority, responsibility, and competency for each position on the project team.
Project organization charts: This component describes the reporting relationships on the team. You might see a hierarchy chart or a responsibility assignment matrix (RAM) here.
Staffing management plan: This component includes
Staff acquisition: Describes how you will bring new team members on board, both from within the organization and external to the organization
Resource calendars: Identifies when specific roles are planned to be used; can include histograms
Staff release plan: Describes how team members will be released from the team
Training needs: Identifies those parts of the work that will require training
Recognition and rewards: Defines criteria for rewards and recognition
Compliance. Describes any licensing, permitting, or other regulatory or compliance requirements
Safety: Defines any safety rules and policies applicable to the project
In addition to the information from the human resource management plan, you are constrained by the project environment and resource availability in your organization. The process and ability to acquire resources will be significantly influenced by whether you work in a project-oriented culture, a matrix environment, or a functionally driven environment. You will also need to be mindful of the human resource policies and procedures you will need to follow.