Even if you have worked with the same people for years, it’s still a good idea to understand human behavior and how a team of individuals work their way up to the full performance level as a team. The other thing to consider is that you may be very new to project management. Maybe you were awesome at your job and got promoted to project manager and now you oversee people who you used to work with in the trenches. I call this being an accidental project manager. This can be difficult because many organizations rarely provide management training to their new managers and instead provide the trial-by-fire and school-of-hard-knocks version instead.
Even more important than executing the work, having pretty Gantt charts, and making sure your sponsor is happy, is being able to guide, manage, and motivate your team, because a motivated team will typically...