Ithuta JV

Source - Article by Bob Andrew

A lot has been written about the responsibilities of a Project Manager, for example, to provide a clear understanding of project objectives, define all roles and responsibilities, review and supervise the execution plan and promote team work. But, what about the obligations of the members of the project team?

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Firstly, there are several ‘hard’ obligations, such as each team member taking a proactive approach to competently complete all project activities tasks that are assigned to them and for the team members to collaborate so as to complete the project, adhering to all contractual requirements, laws, regulations, applicable codes and professional practices and standards.

Beyond these, however, is a deeper set of values, ethical principles and professional behaviour that are required to create the climate of mutual trust and respect that a professional team requires to ensure integrity and quality of performance. In particular, each team member needs to adhere to a code of conduct to foster the relationship between that team member and the Project Manager. The overriding principle here is that the Project Manager is the ‘senior partner’ and the success of the team member is dependent on the success of the Project Manager. If you let him down, you will also go down, ultimately.

In my view, a code of conduct for team members should include the following basic principles:
• Information that can be used to make decisions should never be withheld from the Project Manager
• If differences exist between the team member and the Project Manager, the team member should never think of doing work unprofessionally as way of ‘punishing’ the Project Manager, for example, by letting the Project Manager make a mistake even though the team member could have avoided it
• The Project Manager should never be ‘surprised’ by not being adequately informed
• The team member should always make the Project Manager ‘look good’ and feel proud to have the team member as part of his team
• If the team member tells other people that the Project Manager is incapable, this really implies that the team member is incapable of providing the necessary support to the Project Manager: if you ‘back-stab’ your Project Manager, you are ‘back-stabbing’ yourself