Staff management planning is important to prevent or minimize the battle for resources, which is the number one problem for most Project Managers. The Staff Management section of the Project Management Plan addresses the following:

• Identifies project roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships

• Describes how the project team will be formed, developed, and managed. This includes procedures on releasing and adding team members

Identification of roles can occur even before you know the specific names that will fill those roles. It is based on the parameters and demands of the project. Examples of roles are “Executive Sponsor”, “Project Manager”, “Business Analyst”, “Tester”, “Contract Reviewer”, etc.

Defining the responsibilities of each role is important to minimize the chance of two unwanted outcomes: (1) two or more people are duplicating effort because they all think they own it; (2) key responsibilities are not taken on by anyone because they think it is owned by someone else.

Defining the reporting relationships is important as you will need to know who to go to for permissions and escalations.

Understanding how the project team will be formed is important to make sure you will have the roles filled on time, for the time needed, and with the skill sets required to meet the schedule.

The Project Manager also has a responsibility to develop the project team members soft and hard skills so they become more valuable to the organization and increase their personal job satisfaction. This development can take many forms. It can be formal training, coaching or show by example. You can discuss who will be targeted for development with the managers of the project team members and define what form it will take.