Problem Children and What to Do About It

A fellow project manager came to me recently with a dilemma I've seen a few times before: his superstar software developer has an attitude and ego to match his prodigious skills. As such, this individual is causing chaos on this PM's project team with the behaviors listed below:

• Routinely dismisses and belittles ideas advanced by other team members, particularly in meetings. More than a few of these episodes degenerated into personal attacks on other project team members.
  
• Has productivity swings that range from super-human delivery of working software to days on end with nothing substantial delivered.
• Feels that formal development and project processes and standards do not generally apply to him, as it interferes with his 'creativity' and 'sense of urgency' in delivering his project work.
  

The project manager who informed me of this dillemma unfortunately rationalized keeping this individual on the team because he is a superb developer and the PM 'cannot afford' to lose an individual with such talents.

I told him that this person is severely dysfunctional regardless of his contributions or the potential for them, and that he had, as I saw it, three possible avenues of resolution:

1. Confront the individual, with line management, about the behaviors and inform him that they will cease immediately, 'or else...'.
2. Move the individual's work out of the project task mainstream and give him assignments that he can work on as an individual contributor. This leaves the remainder of the team to execute the majority of the project tasks.
3. Remove the individual from the project completely, and perhaps terminate his employment (although that's not in this particular PM's scope to do so).

Team members like this, regardless of their brilliance and accomplishments, hurt your project team (and thus your projects) more severely that most PMs realize. Why? Because the disruption and angst that they routinely cause brings down the morale and productivity of the rest of your team. The magnitude of the disruptor's contributions is usually not enough to counteract the lack of productivity of the other team members, even though they are less talented, experienced, or gifted.

This is a situation that most project managers can never afford to maintain, even short-term. What usually happens in cases where the behaviors are tolerated is that the affected projects' executions and outcomes swing back-and-forth between great execution and unmitigated failure - usually failure to deliver or very late as opposed to project plans. Not to mention the very toxic work environment situations of this type routinely create.

You cannot afford to have this happen to you, and if it does, you must take action immediately. Don't wait until it festers and infects the rest of your team, just don't tolerate unprofessional behavior at any time and don't be afraid to remove or re-assign (or get rid of) people like this. What you're potentially losing will retrospectively look trivial compared to the low morale (and possible mutiny) of the rest of your team members.


Project Management