Reaching Top Performing Teams in successful projects : A Case study on Project Excellence Award Winning Teams

Abstract: People and the project teams are the ones who drive us above and beyond. The literature on project management has a strong focus on developing superhero project managers who can lead, transform, and grow project teams using numerous projects management tools. Projects are known as a team effort yet the research on top performing project teams, I argue are not comprehensive. There are only a handful of studies done on how to lead project teams towards top performance. In the recent years, the concept of shared leadership and co-creation has been developing and pointing even more towards the need to work with team processes and that the project management is about the team and not the project manager. In this study I have examined the key elements of values, standards and roles and how top performing teams in projects are developed and sustained. This study is based on ten comprehensive interviews with project award winners and their perception of the key elements to their success stories. The results of the study have indicated the importance of empowering the people and the project team towards selfmanaging team. The results reveal further that bringing up a value-discussion in project teams and specifically top performing ones might be perceived as counterproductive.