The best course of action for all those questions is establishing proper communication with all team members. While acquiring team members it is the project manager's responsibility to organize a rough schedule of team members planned vacations/absences. If you preemptively plan around the absences there should be no issues. However, this is a perfect scenario and emergencies occur in the real world, therefore the project manager should be able to maneuver around unplanned absences with contingency plans in place. For the last two questions the mini-sim this week introduced these two problems of resource allocation and team member time. The best resolution to this scenario is to meet directly with those involved in the problem and hash out the problem and look for alternatives in order to drive the project to completion within the scheduled period.

First of, I would talk to the individual team member to make sure everything is going well. As a project manager, it is your duty to make sure each member of the team is in the right mind when coming to work. As far as taking absences or vacations, when you get hired you are a lotted a certain paid time off and I would make sure I speak to each person individually before bringing them into my team. And if life gets in the way, I will make sure I have someone who can do the same tasks during their absences. Life gets in the way but as a PM, it is your duty to fill in the gaps because you were given a certain project. This is what I believe makes a good project manager. I would resign the tasks and make sure those tasks are complete by someone else or myself. As a project manager, you will have to put in the extra time to make sure everything is complete. As a PM, you look at your overall project and its end goal. This means you put in the extra time when another team member is gone because it is your job. Its your project and if it does not get completed, you are person who will be answering to the clients. You will sit in the meetings and explain why a project is delayed. I would make sure every member in my team can keep up with their time management. This is one essential skill to complete a project.

These issues are common in any industry. There will always be people that are unavailable due to vacation or sick leave. This can impact the life-cycle of the project and possibly delay some parts of the process. The key to mitigate delays due to these issues is by establishing proper communication. Once proper communication is established, there is follow-up on the work that needs to be done. For example, if I am taking a vacation for a week, I would let the project manager know and delegate my work to someone that is capable of fulfilling the tasks assigned to me. At a higher level, when in the planning stage certain steps should be given a decent amount of time to account for this. When a project is in the summer months, when employees typically take vacations, the time allotted for tasks is generally increased due to these reasons. In the end, we're all human, we have other obligations, but to ensure nothing is interrupted, proper communication must be established.

I can see that the scenario you are bringing up is similar to the one in the mini sim 2. Personal differences will always occur, but the as a Project Manager you need to make all your team aware that in the work space, it is mandatory to finish the project on time and with good quality. Personal differences usually lead to communication problems between the people who suffer it, so I would create a meeting between me (PM) and the people who have the differences. In the meeting I would explain that there is no space for arguing between team members
My father says that it is not what you deliver but how you deliver it. If I have a conflict with a team member in regard of vacation problems, then I would simply talk to them ahead of time and try to work something out for both parts. Communication is key when doing a project.
Let me know what you think!

Sincerely,
Roberto Pineda.

When reading this question, the term "enterprise environmental factors" comes to mind which relates to the companies culture, people available and software used. In this situation, I think the companies culture would ensure that even if people are gone on vacation, there is still someone to do their job. At my old company General Dynamics Electric Boat, the culture was to always have a backup for each person. This was posted on the company intranet along with their supervisor. If someone is not at work, everyone knows one pony doesn't stop the show so you can call their supervisor for information or call their listed backup. Usually, this person is competent in the needed area and has been briefed on the current status of the project. If there is a personnel shortage (which happens) things do get interesting. It takes awhile to hire and bring in more people. People are usually on multiple teams and have to work very hard to keep up. This is when the project manager needs to go to management and ask for overtime authorization. This means that if these people are needed and working that hard, you need to pay them 1.5 or 2 times their salary per hour after 40 hrs until the new hires can start. When a shortage of personal happens, sometimes there isn't an easy solution but you make the employee know that they are appreciated and pay them.

As a PM, my approach to the management of personal resources (both available workable hours and work collaboration) would be to employ a system that informs all employees of everyone’s general work schedule in addition to being physically present on site. By making this planned time off public, both management and employees can visually see planned vacations of employees and staff rotation schedules well in advance so the proper actions can be taken to avoid delays. These actions can include anything from temporarily switching around some employees jobs to hiring more staff if the issue requires a more long term solution. In this way, nobody is surprised about upcoming job role changes/ hires which allows for an informed and transparent work environment.

As for dealing with team development issues, I would employ a technique that is currently being used at my current job: being an on-site presence. Frequently, both the PM and the Sr. Product engineer make rounds on the production floor of the medical device plant I am working in talking to both upper-level management and staff alike. This gesture portrays a great deal of humility which serves to both make employees feel inclusive in the project plan and to identify any potential personal issues well before they arise. It does not take a great deal of time out of their busy schedule, but it can make all the difference in team development.

Project managers should take the time during the actual development phase of forming the project team could in order to deal with real world issues such as absences, vacations, and obligations to other teams. This is such a critical time to plan ahead of time for these types of occurrences. When forming a project team, it is indeed best to have team members whose strengths and weaknesses compliment each other so there is a well rounded staff behind the development of a project. However, once the balance is already accounted for, a project manager should start thinking how to duplicate each talent of the project team just in case that said talent were to take one, two, or even three weeks vacation. If there is only one person who can a specific task on the project team then there needs to be a more careful selection of a project team. Just in case an employee was to take some time off from work, then there should at least be one other person else who is able to fulfill their duty no matter how significant the role is. So again, I want to highlight how critical the development of a project team can be later on during these occurrences.

I would like to point out how beneficial dag56's approach of employing a public monetary system of employees work schedules is. If this was implemented into a company, then employees will definitely get a good idea of when not to plan a vacation or take time off. Two similar people of the same talent are able to see when there is a definite need for their role in the project just in case one of them was out of office.

I agree with your approach tn58. Having a personal relationship with members of the team is extremely important. This will better allow for comfortable communication in which members will be more honest when requesting time off. This will also make assessing and resolving any issues the members have more easily possible if there is mutual respect and understanding in the situation.

As a PM, these types of scenarios should be anticipated with proper communication between all team members. As a result the project manager as the responsibility to organize and communicate between team members, it is important to have weekly updates on project statuses to address potential complications that may delay project deadlines.

Chris

I understand and for the most part agree with both your posts but on the other hand, I have had a personal experience where personal ties to project members with the project managers allowed them to unprofessionally think that it was okay to have a certain behavior. So I would like to add to personal relationships that professional wise the project manager has to be assertive and firm to take action when personal relations come out of control.

I am in this situation right now. Being part of different organizations, it is critical to have balance with the dedication. In order to get work done, I must use my time wisely and be practical with what I do. Currently, one of the clubs that I am a part of is organizing a skit. The skit is composed of members from two school: NJIT and Rutgers and each member of different schedules. Everybody has their own plans for this incoming Spring Break and have other responsibilities whether it be family, school, or other extra-curricular activities. It is especially difficult to schedule practice and see who is available. In order to accommodate for everybody’s schedule, I had to put up a survey which everyone filled out for their preferred time for each day. Furthermore, we have posed an incentive for each participant as “perks” for being an active part of the production. Lastly, throughout this process, we have instilled a sense of winning within each member for them to feel that passion that the organizers have for the skit. This will hopefully motivate them.

For vacations specifically, it helps a lot for a PM to talk with each team member they're managing and perhaps get a heads up on when exactly they may take a vacation. This will help you avoid conflicts in the foreseeable future. For example, if someone lets you know that they're deciding to take a vacation during one of the most crucial parts of the project timeline, you could have a chat with them and possibly get them to reschedule their vacation, or maybe focus their efforts on the crucial task. This is where your relationship with your team members will come in handy and be a deciding factor in how successful you are with this persuasion.

A lot has already been said in this post, but teamwork and a PM's handling of team management is a very important prevalent topic. I think the best approach is to set the rules right from the start. Explain what is expected from the employee, how those expectations are to be met, what constitutes deviation from these expectations, what is the allotted amount of deviation, and the consequences of crossing that amount. Explain how much vacation/sick/leave time is allowed, contingency plans under emergencies, and where they should report their grievances. No 'we'll make-it-up as we go along' nonsense. Some advice I was given: Be strict and commanding at the beginning of a working relationship when in a leadership position, then slowly soften as you go. This way you are not to take advantage of, are respected, and, most importantly, your team members can rely upon you and be sure of you.

As has been mentioned above, communication is the key when handling the majority of issues when it comes to team members and personnel. Transparency and communication when it comes to leaves of absence and vacation is immensely helpful. By knowing when people will be unavailable and what deadlines overlap with these leaves allows for collaboration and shifting of roles and responsibilities to ensure project goals are met.

An interesting question that was brought up was what to do when individuals are members of multiple teams or projects. As someone who works in a small company and is a part of multiple projects, my absence can have a larger impact on a project's progression than in a much larger company with larger teams. The key to managing this is communication with my PMs, but also delegating roles and responsibility more. As someone who likes to be responsible for every aspect of my projects, it becomes impossible when other projects are due or need attention. So the best way to handle this, is to know my ability and the ability of my team members, and shift some of the work to other members when appropriate. This ensures smooth project progression even in case of other obligations or absence.