Motivating from scratch

When I was one of only two people left in the office last night, a colleague of mine came round to my desk, pulled up a chair and said, "I have an interesting conundrum."

That got my attention. He's a managerial newbie, but bright and enthusiastic, so I am happy to help.

He went on to explain that he has been asked to manage a small project to implement a tool to automate the deployment of Java code. The project has no Business owner (it comes from the Production Support team) and no real future, because once we migrate to Websphere, the tool will become redundant. It therefore has little priority and therefore no resources. No-one wants to do it either for the reasons already mentioned - it's pretty pointless really.

His conundrum is that it's his job to deliver it, but how can he get some motivation into his team when everyone thinks they should be doing something more worthwhile?

Good question, I thought.

After a little consideration, I suggested getting the guy who originally asked for the thing to come along to the project kick-off meeting and present his objectives and requirements. It will also allow the team to ask questions like Why? If that doesn't work, he'll have to consider bribery :)