Organizational Management:

Technology of Professional Target Team Formation

The goal of this development is to create a technology of automatic optimization of the professional team formation process aimed at specific problem solution.

The technology being developed is to comply with the following principles:

1. formation of  professional teams specifically aimed at the efficient solution of corresponding problems;

2. the optimal choice of effective team leader for the solution of the problems stated;

3. optimal psychological compatibility of each team members;

4. the quantitative optimization of work teams on the team efficiency criterion;

5. monitoring of the task progress achieved by each team.

Let us assume that we have an initial assemblage number of people , out of which we are planning to form work teams for the solution of  certain problems: , each of the latter being realized at the expense of professional skills – operational means: qualifications, skills, knowledge, personal qualities etc. .

The first stage consists in the assessment of professional qualities of each employee from the initial assemblage, with the help of Semantic Analysis technology. This operation presents consequent ranging of the employees by experts (or, for example, one project manager) on the point of operational means of task solution, the ranges being automatically scaled by ladder-scale method. Thus each employee could be characterized by a vector of professional qualities , where   is the average expert evaluation of the -th  quality in the -th employee.

The second stage presents expert evaluation of employee capabilities (ratings) concerning their skills of problem solution (for example, work on a project) wherefore work teams are formed.

Mathematical processing of expert evaluations is carried out on the basis of Semantic Analysis method, according to which professional quality vectors are translated into the relevant semantic coordinates.

Average semantic coordinates of employees are calculated on the basis of expert evaluations.

Then, applying componential analysis with the subsequent "varimax"-rotation, professional qualities are grouped by functional similarity into category groups: , where the final professional evaluation of employees is performed. In fact, a professional is thus characterized as a certain system of independent operational means of a various explicitness degree .

The goal vector  (direction of - problem solution, see Fig 1) is calculated on condition that: , where   - a vector that describes professional qualities of the -th employee    - rigidity (one of the factors of employee's professional stability, calculated by Semantic Analysis method); - is the "rating" of the -th employee that characterizes his ability to solve a specific problem  .

So, the maximal rating of suitability for a definite problem solution belongs to an employee who possesses the most optimal set of operational means of problem solution and has the highest stability.

The described technology allows to decompose each goal vector into categories  and to define the significance of each operational means category for the solution of each problem, as well as professional suitability of each employee for the given problem solution. Besides, it makes possible the formation of a professional team as a set of functional means maximally focused on the specific goal. This problem can be solved out of condition of quality :functional maximization:  for each . Here is the "professional" group evaluation.

Fig 1.

Employees are represented on the scheme in the semantic subspace of the operational means category.  and are the goal vectors for problems и ,  () are the employees' weights into the corresponding problem solution. Professional vectors of groups и are the respective sums of the first and second, third and fourth employees. and are the group ratings for reaching goals and . It is evident that the group efficiency would be calculated by , where is the angle between and . Since , then characterizes total expenses on the problem solution, - stands for productive expenses, while - denotes non-productive expenses.  The efficiency of the first team work is  . The threshold value of the latter is to be defined by a project manager.

In case of forming several target teams out of the given assemblage (for specific problems) the optimal strategy would be the following:

1. preliminary selection of team variants for each problem with the maximal values (not lower than the threshold assigned - the "optimization parameter" T) of the group rating;

2. subsequent selection of the variant that possesses maximum efficiency for this problem.

The optimization parameter is also defined by a project manager as a value expressed in percentage of the maximal group rating.

However, a professional team would be able to completely realize its potential and work as a single unit only on condition of psychological compatibility of its members, as well as the presence of an effective leader.

The third stage consists in determining employee psychological compatibility as part of a professional team. It is also performed with the method of Semantic Analysis. This technology allows the application of independent expert evaluations as well as results of other compatibility testing procedures. The latter case presupposes the application of the described technology for staff recruiting (selection of new staff members for target groups). The process of team formation is performed on the basis of a previously defined taxonomic parameter, which reflects a minimal value of team members' compatibility.

The degree of psychological compatibility of all team members with each employee i  is assessed step by step: , where, , since an employee's compatibility with himself can not be assessed for obvious reasons.  In this variant it is enough for each employee to range the assemblage on the criterion: who would be the first one, second, third, etc. to be my co-worker.  The reverse pole presents a criterion: "who would be the last one I'd like to work with" (each employee actually creates most optimal groups for himself).

The offered technology of team formation can be strategically realized in two variants:

1. most effective target teams are formed automatically, the most effective team leaders determined afterwards;

2. the leaders are appointed,  the target team automatically formed afterward.

The strategy of leader appointment has two realization variants:

1. It is established who of the employees could be the leader irrelevant to a specific task. In this case, the process of optimal team formation is supplied with an additional condition of mandatory participation of one of those prospective leaders in a target team. It can naturally affect the choice of most effective groups for the performance of the tasks prescribed.

2. Authoritative appointment of definite people team leaders for specific goals. This method is least preferable for the formation of most efficient target teams.

During the automatic selection of an effective leader one should orient by the functional maximum:  ,  where  ,  , - is the compatibility evaluation rating of the  -th employee with the -th employee,   - weight coefficients within the range from 0 to 1.

The above described technology is totally computerized and has the following modules:

1. Project manager module.

2. Personnel testing module.

3. Data processing module.

Algorithm of optimal target team formation

The formation algorithm  (data processing) can be represented in the following sections:

1. All the employees are initially split into groups according to the respective tasks, issuing from the condition of a positive individual rating value of each one. At this stage the same employees can simultaneously be parts of various groups.

2. Target team optimization is carried out step by step, starting from the group that is smallest in number. The process of each group optimization includes the following stages:

1. all possible variants of a target team are exhausted on the psychological compatibility  criterion by the formula: , where is a number of potential team members after the preliminary selection, - a number of members in a target team. If k has a fixed value, the variants are exhausted on reaching that value. There is a simultaneous dynamic monitoring of the group rating and efficiency: if the received team variant has these values above the threshold (see above), this variant is retained. If the group rating of the obtained team variant exceeds the current maximal value, the team variants obtained by that moment are reviewed out of the new threshold value of the group rating.

2. On receiving all possible variants of a target team, the one with the highest group efficiency is selected.

3. The pre-optimization teams are checked for employees to be excluded from the obtained target team.

3. The results for the obtained target teams are further displayed with the indication of the following  parameters for each team member:

1. direct contribution to task solution (professional index);

2. indirect contribution to task solution (team index);

3. level of psychological compatibility with each team member;

4. target leadership factor for a given group.

All employees excluded from the arranged groups are also displayed with the indication of those groups where these employees could be included at a minimal risk of efficiency fall.

4. A forecast is made for the work progress of the target teams obtained.

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