In seminars on TQM, employees were told that empowerment must be provided to the quality teams. The process of empowerment worked reasonably well on the TQM teams, but struggled on project teams. The question of course, was why. Some of the project teams were large enough to justify their own staff on a full-time basis. Other projects were so small that employees found themselves working on several projects at the same time.
QUESTIONS
1. Should the project team be empowered to set goals or should goals be set elsewhere?
2. Should a project team be empowered to make decisions at the end-of-phase reviews (i.e., open gates to the next phase)?
3. How does a project manager know whether his/her team is empowered to make decisions?
4. How does a project manager know whether employees are empowered to make decisions for their line managers?
5. How does a team resolve a problem if the team members are not empowered to make decisions?
6. Who empowers project team members?
7. Can empowerment work if project team members are part-time on several projects at once?