Should individuals be given incentives for completing specific tasks on a project?

Question

or should the entire project team be given equal incentives for completion of project?

Answer 1

If incentives are given they should be shared with the whole team but realize there can be no fair way to do it. There are better ways and worse ways but none are completely fair.

I have worked on a number of projects and there is no way to be equal on a project. Someone is more important to the project. Someone works more hours than others. Some people have other projects so they can only put part time in on this one. Here are some ideas I have seen and some rules of thumb.

- One company put a pot of money up ($100,000) that would be shared by team members in proportion to their current salary. The higher your salary, the higher your part of the pot. Each week the project was late $10,000 was taken out of the pot. Each day it is early $1,000 would be added to the pot.

- Another company assigned a bonus to each sub task. When you completed a sub task you got that bonus and you could start another sub task. If there was a problem with your work you had to go back and redo it before you could continue with your current task.

- The main thing about incentives is to make the incentive goals shorter. A company wants you to work harder to get this project done. If you are working on a year long project, and the bonus is not earned till the project is done, the bonus is not a motivator.