Project Team Management Practice in Agricultural Projects: The Case of the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Institute (Ati)
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Date
2022-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The success of a project is increasingly connected with the functioning of project teams. In turn it requires project team management that needs to be assessed to measure, evaluate, and promote its effectiveness. The purpose of this study was to assess the project team management practices and identify possible challenges of project team management in projects of Agricultural Transformation Institute. The study used a combination of quantitative and qualitative research approach as both qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analyzed. In this study a descriptive research design was employed, and a census was used as a sampling method. Self-administrative questionnaires were prepared and administered for forty-four members of the project team. In addition, semi-structured and open-ended interviews were executed with ten project managers and five HR staffs. Frequency, percentages, and mean were used to analyze the data obtained. The findings of the study revealed that project team acquiring were practiced well with few limitations of acquiring the required employee on time due to delay in hiring process and in having no staff retention plan to mitigate the frequent staff turnover. Team development practices were poor in major areas of team development practices. Among these practices, the practices of reward and recognition system were not good, teams have no specific written ground rules that guide the teams and the practices of motivating the team were inadequate. The team managing practices were promising with very few limitations. There were good practice of goal setting and performance measurement, conducting team regular meeting and performance evaluation even if it had problems on qualities of feedback. The study concludes that the practices of project team acquiring were moderately practiced, team developing practices were insufficient and the team managing practices were effectively practiced in projects of the organization. Major project team management challenges identified by the study were: Staff turnover, delays in getting staff replacement, lack of clear written rules to guide team members, lack of clearly defined reward system to motivate staffs; lack of employee retention plan to retain staff; overlapping responsibilities among team members and limitations in managing change process. Based on the findings, this study suggested that the organization has to give attention towards staff turnover and the hiring delay of project team acquiring practices; establish team ground rules and strengthen training, reward and team motivating practices of team development practices, and implement practices that can address stakeholders and change management related problems of managing project teams.
Key words: Project Manager, Project Team, Feedback, Practice, Team management, team building. Incentive, reward, acquiring, training, motivating