Research On Project Team Effectiveness Maturity

Since 1990s, more and more organizations and enterprises have begun to rely on project teams to fulfill assignments which are hard to be accomplished by a single branch or by branches in hierarchical organizational structure. Besides, more and more business operations have begun to focus on projects instead of organizational structures. However, the high failure rate of projects remains high even till now. Through analysis of the causes of failure of projects, it has been found out that the key of success or failure of a project lies in the project team. Therefore, the dissertation puts forward the concept of Project Team Effectiveness Maturity (PTEM) and makes some explorations into it theoretically and practically.PTEM refers to the goal achievement level of a project team to achieve its anticipated results on time and within budget. Taking PTEM as its object; the coupling relationship between system composing factors of PTEM as its basis and the advancement system of PTEM as its approach, through the implementation of effectiveness advancement process corresponding to different maturity grades, the research on PTEM aims to realize the development of project team effectiveness from lower maturity grades to higher ones so as to improve the success rate of projects.The dissertation includes seven chapters:Chapter one puts forward research problems of the dissertation, their goals and significances, research methods, major content and its innovation points. The interest of the research is due to the continuous high failure rate of projects since 1990s. The dissertation focuses on the research of PTEM on the basis of sufficient analysis of causes of failure of projects. By defining some key concepts, the dissertation elaborates the object and significance of the research, makes clear methods and major content of the research and sums up innovation points of it. Chapter two summarizes theories relevant with the research of PTEM. Most of previous researches have acquired some important results theoretically or practically. However, they are still insufficient in the research on PTEM for the reason that they only pay attention to the improvement of performance of one or a few factors which will affect the effectiveness of project teams but overlook the problem of harmony between the performance of improved factors and unimproved ones. What's more important, these researches have neglected the complexity of PTEM system and have failed to realize the importance to improve the coupling relationship of system composing factors continuously with change of the system.Chapter three analyzes and designs the system of PTEM. Through analysis of operation structure and features of the system of PTEM and from the angle of system management, the dissertation classifies system composing factors of PTEM into team organization management factors, team capacity management factors, team culture management factors and team performance management factors so as to adapt to operation of the system of PTEM and to meet the demand of PTEM to improve continuously. Under the process evolution and process management thinking of People Capability Maturity Model which implies that all processes can only become mature gradually, the design of the system of PTEM classifies effectiveness maturity level into different grades so as to advance the PTEM level continuously and spirally through implementation and improvement of key processes.Chapter four brings forward the advancement system of PTEM. Based on processes and carried out according to different phases, the advancement system is a kind of system structure which will advance the level of PTEM. Except for Initial, all other maturity grades of the advancement system of PTEM will form a process domain and each process domain defines four corresponding processes and defines a series of features need to be achieved by carrying out theses processes the realization of which indicate that the effectiveness level of the project team has achieved a certain grade of maturity. All advancements of the level of PTEM are supported by comparatively independent advancements of processes covered within the corresponding maturity grades. The advancement system of PTEM describes the key advancement processes: from Initial to Managed; from Managed to Defined, from Defined to Predictable and from Predictable to Optimizing. Through carrying out these key processes, project teams can advance their effectiveness steadily. The advancement system has offered an effective and progressive system operation method to advance the level of PTEM continuously.Chapter five designs the evaluation index system, method, and evaluation model of PTEM. For the reason that PTEM is a complicated system which is composed of many interrelated and interactive factors, the evaluation index system of PTEM itself is not an internal independent hierarchical structure. Therefore, the dissertation adopts ANP to evaluate the PTEM grades. Through formation of network hierarchical structure, it calculates the relative importance coefficients of 16 evaluation index and on this basis, in accordance with the grading results of project team members, calculates synthetic grading value of the effectiveness maturity of the project teams to be used as evaluation basis of grades of PTEM.Chapter six carries out positive study on the efficiency of the advancement system of PTEM. Questionnaires are adopted for the study and the data are collected through e-mails which include 75 questionnaires from 6 project teams among which 63 are valid. Through calculation and analysis of the positive data, the dissertation evaluates the level and grade of effectiveness maturity of a certain positive project team. Besides, two teams of similar conditions within one organization are also chosen for the positive research (one has carried out the advancement system of effectiveness maturity while another has not). Through comparison and through t test, it is verified that the level of effectiveness maturity of those project teams which have carried out the advancement system is much higher than those teams which haven't adopted the system and the validity of advancement system of PTEM is validated.Chapter seven summarizes the research of the dissertation and points out prospects and possibilities for follow-up researches.Innovation points of the dissertation include:1. Based on principles of system theory, the dissertation brings forward the concept of PTEM and realizes systematic research of PTEM. PTEM refers to the goal achievement level of a project team to achieve its anticipated results on time and within budget. "Effectiveness" refers to the capability of a project team to achieve anticipated results while "maturity" describes a state of development and the concept of PTEM is brought forward to deeply explore into the dynamic process of a project team to advance its effectiveness continuously. The concept not only covers the capacity needed for a project team to achieve anticipated results, but also emphasizes the state of effectiveness maturity level of a project team to achieve its anticipated results. Different from previous researches, the dissertation analyzes system features of PTEM and it mainly focuses on the interaction and coupling degree between system composing factors, emphasizing that with changes of the system, it is really important to continuously improve the coupling relationship between system composing factors so as to achieve the systematic research on PTEM.2. Based on system management theory, the dissertation designs the classification method of system composing factors of PTEM and achieves dynamic and manageable research on PTEM. The previous researches of team/project team mainly focuses on three aspects: researches on factors that will affect effectiveness of a project team; researches on operation process of a team and researches on details of some relevant factors. These researches have neglected the system feature of a project team to advance continuously in its feedback-correction process (project milestone) and they have also neglected the measurement and evaluation of effectiveness of a project team: functionality (whether the quality is high or low; whether the result is adoptable) in achieving anticipated results (milestone project results); cost effectiveness (whether the project goes beyond budget) and time effectiveness (whether the project is achieved within scheduled time limit). Out of the reason that PTEM can not only bring out results but also have such system features as being gradual; cooperative; integrative and adaptable, if we only take such factors of team members as system composing factors of project team effectiveness: individual character; skill level; experience; knowledge level, we can only evaluate their influence on PTEM statically and one-sidedly instead of dynamically and systematically. Therefore, from the angle of system management, the dissertation classifies the system composing factors of PTEM into team organization management factors; team capacity management factors; team culture management factors and team performance management factors so as to meet the requirement of PTEM to advance continuously. For the reason that these four factors can show system attributes of PTEM clearly and comprehensively, the classification method of system composing factors of PTEM in the dissertation can help make the research on PTEM systematically, dynamically and manageably.3. Based on process management theory, the dissertation brings forward the advancement system of PTEM which embodies system management thinking of process evolution and realizes the gradual advancement of PTEM. Based on key processes and carried out by stages, the advancement system of PTEM is a kind of system structure to advance the PTEM level and it can guide a project team to orderly carry out its advancement process of relevant grade on the basis of current PTEM. The advancement system of PTEM is composed of five maturity grades: Initial, Managed, Defined, Predictable and Optimizing and it has merged maturity grades; process domains; goals and key processes into an organic whole which embodies the harmony among system composing factors; key processes and efficiency of PTEM to varying degrees. The advancement system of PTEM helps us to focus on some key processes when studying the realm of effectiveness advancement and it also strings different process domains of effectiveness advancement into one system. In another word, the process domain of each maturity grade has created an interrelated process system which has offered an effective, gradual operation method based on process evolution to advance the level of PTEM continuously.