4. TEAMWORK AND COMMUNICATION
4.1 Team Project Management Tools and Strategies
Suzan Last and Candice Neveu
Teamwork is a key component of almost any workplace, but it is essential in engineering and software development environments where you often find yourself working as part of a team on large projects. Imagine for a moment how many people must work together to designs a product like Skyrim (click here if you want to know: Skyrim development team).
It is is widely accepted that team synergy and team intelligence lead to greater efficiency and better results in most situations. Why, then, are some people reluctant to engage in teamwork? Perhaps this reluctance stems from ineffective or dysfunctional teamwork experiences in the past. Often the culprit in these situations is not a “poor team player” or an “inability to get along with others.” More likely it was caused by one of two things: misaligned goals or confusion over roles. For teamwork to be effective, all members of the team must understand and share the goals of the project, and all members must fully understand their roles—what is expected of them, and how they will be held accountable. An effective team leader will make sure that goals and roles are fully understood by all team members.
“Introduction to Teamwork,” a section in Designing Engineers, by Susan McCahan et al.[1] provides a detailed description of the stages of the Tuckman Team Formation model and the need for effective communications at each stage. A team, according to McCahan et al., “is a group of people who come together to work in an interrelated manner towards a common goal.” They go on to differentiate a team from a group by noting that a team is connected by “a common purpose or goal and the reliance on the skills of all the members to meet the goal” [2]. In other words, team members see themselves as part of a collective working towards a common goal rather than individuals working on separate tasks that may lead to an end product. In order to work effectively, team members need to communicate clearly and constructively, and learn how to deal with crises and conflicts that will inevitably arise.
EXERCISE 4.1 Reflect on your previous team work experience
Think of a time when you had to work with others to produce something – a design, poster, presentation, document, etc. Briefly describe what the task was and then consider the following questions:
- What was the team’s overall goal?
- What was your job within the group?
- How were the jobs distributed?
- How well did your group function? Did anyone on the team behave in ways that McCahan et al. characterize as “hitchhikers, hijackers, isolationists, and enablers”?[3]
- Was the outcome successful?
- Would you happily work with those team mates again on another project? Why or why not?
- How would you rate your overall experience and why?
Some common benefits of working in teams include increased productivity, increased innovation, and increased efficiency. Excellent