Hello everyone.
If this is the first time you are watching my PMP exam prep video, then let me tell you
one thing.
I follow PMP exam content outline and not any reference book.
PMP exam is based upon PMP exam content outline, not any reference book.
Lot of people have confusion about this.
And in this video, I'm going to talk about task number four of domain people, which is
empowered team members and stakeholders.
By the way, who am I?
My name is Varun and I'm the founder of EduHubSpot, a training company, which trains for PMP,
ACP, RMP, PfMP, SAFe certifications.
You name it and we do it.
My team and I have given thousands of PMPs to this industry.
So, let's go right into it.
So, as you all know, I follow a real-life step-by-step scenario of explaining the PMP
concepts.
We start with effective team formation, then we plan, then we execute, then we monitor
control, then we grow the business.
And finally, we close the project.
So, we follow the complete life cycle of your project so that you can understand.
And in this, we are talking about effective team formation, which is my chapter number
one.
And we are talking about the fourth video, which is empower team members and stakeholders.
Now, just to give you the example, let's say, I want to open a cupcake business.
What do I need?
I need a baker.
I need someone to do the marketing for me, someone to deliver the work, the cupcakes,
then I may need a website, someone technical person, right?
So, first what you do is you build a team which was our task number one of this chapter,
build a team, make sure you have the ‘A’ players.
Then you define the ground rules with your team to make sure everyone knows what their
responsibility is.
After that, what we did, we negotiated the project agreements, let's say on your cupcake,
you need lot of sugar.
So, you need a constant supply of sugar, but you wanted to take it at a discounted price.
So, you do an agreement with a third party who will give you the sugar.
So, you’ll negotiate the agreements.
And finally, in this video, we will talk about empowered team members and stakeholders, which
means you will make sure that you are helping the team members to take a decision, to make
sure they achieve the project goal.
So, let's see what our exam content outline, the free tool, has to say about the enablers
of this.
Let's go right into that.
So, this is my exam content outline free tool.
This is our task number four, empower team members and stakeholders.
Click on that.
Once you click on that, you will be on the specific task.
So, this is domain one, task four.
You will see organize around team strengths.
So, basically, these are the enablers as for the exam outline.
So, organize around team strengths.
Basically, what does that mean?
Make sure that whatever your team strengths are, you organize your team members, give
them those tasks, support the team, task accountability.
Now, what does that mean?
First of all, make your team accountable.
For example, in my step-by-step study plan, what do I do?
I ask my team members.
I ask my students to be accountable for this homework.
Like, “I'll say homework number three, deadline is 25th of February.
And I want to make sure you complete these three things.”
So, what I'm doing?
I'm making sure that my team members, which is basically you guys, my students are accountable
to complete this task and I'm supporting them.
Then evaluate demonstration of task accountability.
Exactly.
Once you finish the homework, you send me an email and you say, “Varun, I completed
this.”
So that's what I'm doing?
I'm demonstrating that task accountability.
I'm evaluating your position, how you are doing in that particular homework.
Then determine and bestow levels of decision-making authority.
Yes, decision-making is a very important concept.
So, you need to have a right approach.
And we will do some practice questions on that.
And this is something which we'll do at the later phase.
Once we complete the theoretical part.
And by the way, if you need this free tool, if you are my student, you already have that.
But if you're not my student, you just have to go to my website, www.eduhubspot.com.
And once you go over there, just talk to my chat representative and they'll walk you through
this tool through a Zoom call and that's it.
You can have it.
If you become a student, you'll pass the exam.
If you don't become a student, then also you may pass the exam, but at least you’ll have
a proper concept and you can at least get this free tool.
So, let's talk about the concepts now.
So, first we have is the organize around team strengths.
So, what you should do is first of all, do the SWOT analysis.
What is SWOT analysis?
Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threats.
So, based upon the strengths, you should identify the opportunity.
Similarly, based upon the weakness, you should identify the threats and eliminate them.
So, for example, how would your baker feel if that baker is given the task of making
the website?
That person is definitely not equipped to do that, right?
So, you have to make sure that work with the team to identify their strength and give them
what they're good at.
Similarly, the developer, the coder, who has no clue about how to make a cupcake, you would
not want that person to do that task, right?
So that's what you organize around team strengths.
Once you have your team, it is important to organize them based on their strengths and
weakness.
How the team makes this decision?
Because you have the team members, there may be so much overlapping task also, and you
don't want conflicts, right?
So, you need to have a decision-making technique in place like voting, unanimity, majority,
a multi-criteria decision analysis needs to be done.
And this is something I will be teaching you in plan the project work, which is chapter
number two and we'll talk about.
That's not a free video, which is available on YouTube.
That will be on my website, www.eduhubspot.com.
Information is in the description box of the YouTube, but don't go now.
Finish this video first, and then you can definitely visit.
Team members need to take decisions on risk, priorities, et cetera.
For example, there is a risk which is your competitor has created another bakery in your
location.
How would you manage that risk?
How would you come up with a solution, a response to that risk, right?
So, your team has to identify those things and your team has to help you take a decision
or let them take a decision, which is good for all of us.
Team charter will define the decision-making practice.
If you remember, we did team charter in one of the videos previously, which tells the
dos and don’ts of the team, right?
We will talk about that also in future videos.
Performance should be a win-win for all.
Yes, you have to make sure that it has to be a win-win for all of your team members.
For instance, if someone is not comfortable with a particular task, help that person,
support that person.
But if you think that person will be better suited for some other tasks, talk to that
person and let him or her do that particular work.
And of course, voting and multi-criteria decisions, I already talked about.
Support the task team accountability.
Exactly.
You, as a project manager, have to make sure that you motivate the team members to do the
work.
For example, I give my students homework.
I ask them, I'm making them accountable, “By this deadline, you have to complete this much,”
right?
So, I'm supporting them to make sure they do the work.
And self-organize is also an important task.
This is specifically used in the Agile terminology.
It’s an Agile terminology.
But what does that mean?
You, as a project manager, should not tell the team, do this, do that.
No.
You want your team members to self-organize, pick up the work on their own.
They should feel accountable to do the work.
That will actually help you in a long run, right?
And of course, the traditional approach which is the Predictive cycle.
They use Gantt chart and Gantt chart is something we will talk about that in our schedule management,
which is plan the project work.
Evaluate the demonstration of task accountability.
Exactly.
You, as a PM, have to make sure you are evaluating the progress.
For example, in my case, our students, what our mentors do, we work with each of a student
on one-on-one basis and we give them homework.
Then once the student completes that homework, he or she reaches out to us and we evaluate
their performance and give them feedback before moving into the next chapter.
What are we doing?
We’re evaluating your progress.
And similarly, at the same time, you are accountable also to complete that homework.
Team buy-in is very important.
Like if I'm saying that, “Hey, your task, your deadline is 25th of February.”
Then you need to make sure that you are ready.
If you are not comfortable by 25th of February deadline, you cannot do that, right?
So, team buy-in is also very important.
And of course, the traditional users, the WBS, WBS dictionary, we will talk about that
in detail in plan.
And the agile world, we have already talked about the Kanban board, right?
The dos, which is to do, doing and done, the Kanban board.
I’ve explained the Kanban board in detail in my Agile video link is in the description
box.
And the last enabler we have for this particular task is determine and bestow the levels of
decision-making authority.
Basically, as a PM, you need to make sure you have the visibility of the project.
At the same end, you should make sure that the team is accountable to complete the work,
also.
Don't give them task.
Let them self-organize.
But at the same time, you need to work with the team to support them, right?
Team should come up with the task, team should come up with the estimates.
If the team says that this task will take four hours, don't force them to make it for
one hour.
Of course, if it's a priority, you can share it.
But if it's four hours, it is four hours.
Trust your team.
Your team should always feel motivated to do the right work, to make sure that the project
gets completed as per the requirement within the time, within the cost, which has been
given to your project.
So, this marks the completion of a theoretical part, but please don't go away.
We will do some chapter questions and we will use our exam content free outline tool.
So, we will use that.
I'll be doing one of the questions from here.
Next question, as I told you, you can get this from my website and you can do it on
your own.
Sam has been working on Agile projects for quite some time.
In the retrospective, he brought up a concern regarding an organizational activity and the
way it should have been done.
What should you do as a scrum master with this topic?
I know I'm explaining more on the outline, but I'm giving you a question on Agile, because
this is how I want to trick you.
The questions in exam will come from Predictive and Agile, both, and you should be ready by
that.
So, this question, it looks like there is a concern regarding the organizational activity,
like at an organization level, and you need to resolve it.
Let's see.
A) Tell Sam that organization level topics are out of bounds of retrospective since the
focus should be on the Agile team and last sprint.
Kind of true.
However, I would not 100% agree with this statement.
What do I mean by that?
So, in the retrospective, you can definitely come up with organization level topics, and
you have to take a decision, not do something about it.
Option A, you're not taking a decision.
You're not doing something about it.
You're just ignoring that problem, which is not correct.
So, double-click on this and it shows it's a wrong answer.
Let's see B. Sometimes we don't understand the real reason behind what management is
doing.
We should let these things run the way they are.
If this is how you feel, this means it's time to change the organization.
Definitely out.
Wrong answer.
Let's see option C. Understand the problems pointed out by Sam and the resolution he's
suggesting, and then provide the retrospective department, this feedback for consideration
and improvement.
So, you're not leaving the problem over here.
You're at least taking a decision.
So, C looks like a good choice.
D. Tell Sam that there is no point in complaining about things.
Rather he should focus on improving his work and his team.
Again, you are ignoring the problem.
So, D should be out as well.
Wrong answer.
And the correct one is C, which is absolutely correct.
You can click here to see the answer explanation, also.
You can also watch an explanation video for this question where I'm explaining this question
to you.
And the question number two, another Agile question, but I will let you do it on your
own.
Go to my website, www.eduhubspot.com and talk to my sales team.
Talk to my chat support representative.
They'll walk you through this and they'll give it to you.
So, this marks the completion offer, empower team members and stakeholders, small video,
but definitely interesting.
We will move on to the next one, which is ensure team members, stakeholders are adequately
trained, which is task number five of your domain people.
But before you go, I have one small request to you.
Please, if you like this video, if you learn something from this video, on the comment
section, let me know how the video was.
If you need more videos, tell me the number of hours you can spend on daily basis to study.
Trust me, I reply to each and every comment on the website.
Thank you.
Stayed tuned.