KNOW your team

As a project manager, I would argue that KNOWing your team is one of the most important thing you should do, especially if you are a program or portfolio manager who will have several projects running at the same time with different stakeholders and the only consistent, binding link you have with all these projects is your team.

How do you know your team and how do you use the knowledge? I typically ensure that I have or can get the following for each of my team members:

1) Basic Information - name, experience, expertise, skills, education - all your general resume-level information. This is his "what was and what is" information.
2) Career Goals - and based not just on "where do you think you are in 5 years" type of questions. A person may be an expert today at a certain skill but is dying to get out it and hates doing the same thing again. This is his "what is the future he wants to see" and can it be in your team.
3) Work Preferences - is he the type of person who prefers to work alone or in a team setting. I have seen individuals who excel when doing some tasks all by themselves. Don't discount them immediately out of your team if you know he has a fit in your team.
4) Culture Fit - will he fit with the "culture" of the overall team, including yours
5) Leadership Potential  - regardless of what role he might play in your team, although this comes more in handy when you are a program or portfolio manager obviously. This also is an important input in your "9-box" analysis of your team which is anothe topic in itself
6) Current Rate and perceived self-value growth rate
7) Unique traits and situations - for example - does he have any pet peeves that may affect his work?

Knowing the above for each of your team members and knowing your project - you can now do your "mission impossible" team selection and formation ensuring that each role is critical and that each player playing the role will complement the rest of the team.