PM 570 Week 1 Leading the Project Team Example

Six Functions, One Refrigerant Deadline: Leading the Cross-Functional Team That Redesigns a Rooftop Unit Line

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PM/570: Projects, Programs, and Portfolios

Week 1 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Red River Air Systems, its people, product line and figures are composites written for a model paper.

Red River Air Systems is a composite manufacturer in Wichita Falls, Texas, that builds light commercial rooftop air conditioning and heat pump units for restaurants, small offices and retail stores. Its three-to-five-ton line accounts for about 37 percent of its $410 million in annual revenue. Federal rules adopted under the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act require new light commercial air conditioning systems to move away from high-warming refrigerants such as R-410A toward alternatives with much lower global warming potential, most of which are classed as mildly flammable. Red River has chosen R-454B. The redesign project must deliver certified, production-ready units before the compliance date, or the company's dealers will turn to competitors already shipping compliant equipment. The project manager, Monique Barrett, leads a 14-person team that has never worked together. This paper analyzes how she should lead it.

The Strategic Stakes

The redesign is not a routine engineering change. It protects the company's largest product line, sets the design pattern for every other line that must convert and, if executed well, gives Red River a chance to win dealers from slower competitors. The project is also the first in what leadership expects to become a program of related conversions, the subject of Week 3. Leadership of this team therefore matters beyond the project: it will shape how the company's functions work together on the projects that follow.

The Team and Its Tensions

The core team includes four design engineers, a controls engineer, two manufacturing engineers, a plant supervisor, a quality and certification specialist, a supply chain manager, a sales engineer representing dealers, a service trainer and two engineers from the compressor supplier, who work from Georgia and join by video. Each function brings a legitimate priority. Engineering wants time to optimize efficiency. Manufacturing wants to change the assembly line as little as possible. Quality must satisfy a safety standard that requires refrigerant leak detection and mitigation for mildly flammable refrigerants in many installations. Supply chain worries about the availability of new sensors and valves. Sales wants dates it can promise. The supplier wants volume commitments before it dedicates production capacity.

These tensions are normal in cross-functional work, but the team also has no shared history. Engineers and plant staff have a long habit of blaming each other for late changes, and the supplier's engineers have never met anyone in the plant.

What the Research Says About Project Leadership

Müller and Turner (2010) studied the leadership competencies of successful project managers using a large international survey and found that emotional competencies such as conscientiousness, communication and sensitivity, together with managerial competencies, distinguished high performers, with the profile varying by project type and complexity. Their finding suggests that Barrett's technical credibility will not be enough on its own.

A comparison of project managers with line managers (Keegan & Den Hartog, 2004) found that transformational leadership was associated with employee commitment and motivation in both groups, although some relationships appeared weaker for project staff, whose ties to a project manager are temporary. The point for Barrett is that inspiring a shared purpose helps, but temporary teams also need clear structure and fair processes because loyalty to the project is not automatic.

Clarke (2010) examined project managers and found that aspects of emotional intelligence were associated with transformational leadership behaviors and with competencies such as teamwork and managing conflict. For a team with a history of blame between engineering and the plant, the ability to recognize and manage emotions in tense meetings is likely to matter as much as any formal process.

Inspiring the team is necessary; on a temporary team it is not sufficient without structure that feels fair.

A Leadership Plan

Barrett's approach combines three elements drawn from this evidence.

First, purpose and structure. At kickoff, the vice president of engineering will explain the strategic stakes directly, and the team will build a charter with decision rights that resolve recurring disputes: engineering owns design choices, manufacturing has a veto on any change after the design freeze unless the vice president overrides it and quality's certification requirements are fixed constraints. Clear rules reduce the room for blame.

Second, a shared mental model of the product. DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus (2010) conducted a meta-analysis of team cognition and found that shared understanding among team members, of the task and of one another, was positively related to team processes and performance. Barrett will run a two-day workshop in the plant where design engineers, plant staff, the service trainer and the supplier's engineers build a prototype unit together and walk the leak detection sequence from sensor to shutdown. Each function will see what the others must solve.

Third, situational adjustment. Design engineers are experienced and self-directed; Barrett will set goals and stay out of their way. Plant supervisors face the greatest change, handling a mildly flammable refrigerant for the first time; she will be closely involved with them, bringing in safety specialists and ensuring their concerns change the design where necessary. The supplier's engineers will be treated as team members, with access to the same reviews and data, rather than as vendors receiving specifications.

Safety, Voice and Early Warning

The new refrigerant raises the stakes of silence. A plant worker who notices that brazing near a sensor harness could damage it, or an engineer who suspects a leak path, must speak up immediately. Edmondson (1999) found in a field study of work teams that shared beliefs about safety for interpersonal risk-taking were associated with learning behavior, which in turn related to performance. Barrett will model this by thanking people publicly for raising problems, will hold a short "what worried you this week" round in each weekly review and will make sure that problems raised early never become a reason for blame later.

Managing Conflict at the Boundaries

The most likely conflicts are engineering against manufacturing over late changes and Red River against the supplier over volume commitments. For the first, the design freeze date and the change rule in the charter provide a neutral reference, and Barrett will bring disputes into the open in the weekly review rather than letting them run through email. For the second, she will work with the supply chain manager and the vice president to offer a tiered commitment tied to the certification milestone, so the supplier sees a credible path to volume.

Judging Team Performance

Barrett will judge the team on outcomes and on how it works. Outcome measures are certification by the planned date, a pilot production run with first-pass yield above 95 percent and dealer training ready before launch. Process measures include the number of design changes after freeze, the time between a problem being found and being raised and a short monthly pulse survey on whether members feel heard. A rising number of late changes or a growing gap between when problems are found and when they are raised would signal that the leadership plan needs adjustment.

Conclusion

Leading Red River's redesign team means turning six functions and an outside supplier into a group that shares an understanding of the product and the stakes. Research on project leadership suggests combining purpose with fair structure, building shared mental models, adjusting to each group and creating the psychological safety that a flammable refrigerant demands. If Barrett succeeds, the company gains not only a compliant product line but a pattern of cross-functional work for the program of conversions that follows.

References

Clarke, N. (2010). Emotional intelligence and its relationship to transformational leadership and key project manager competences. Project Management Journal, 41(2), 5-20. https://doi.org/10.1002/pmj.20162

DeChurch, L. A., & Mesmer-Magnus, J. R. (2010). The cognitive underpinnings of effective teamwork: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(1), 32-53. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017328

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999

Keegan, A. E., & Den Hartog, D. N. (2004). Transformational leadership in a project-based environment: A comparative study of the leadership styles of project managers and line managers. International Journal of Project Management, 22(8), 609-617. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2004.05.005

Müller, R., & Turner, J. R. (2010). Leadership competency profiles of successful project managers. International Journal of Project Management, 28(5), 437-448. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2009.09.003