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Project Teams that Work
David L. Hamil
MESA Solutions, Inc.
7800 Highway 20, W; Tower Bldg., 4’thFloor
Huntsville, Alabama 35807
David L. Hamil
MESA Solutions, Inc.
7800 Highway 20, W; Tower Bldg., 4’thFloor
Huntsville, Alabama 35807
Introduction
Enterprises are under increasing pressure tore-engineer their business processes to become more cost-effective and efficient. Consequently, the demand to improve the process of developing and implementing advanced information technologies, such as AM/FM/GIS, continues to grow. While the use of project management tools and associated “best practices” covers part of the utility business spectrum, personnel issues will most often be the key factor that make or break a project.
This paper addresses the personnel issues by submitting that cooperative vendor and client teamwork will enhance work processes that continually support the dynamic AM/FM/GIS business, from planning through the execution of a project. The challenge ahead is to structure and manage the project team so that we can effectively deliver results to the client and benefits to the company and team.
Team Building
The entire definition and direction of an AM/FM/GIS project will come from the project team. With such significant responsibility, selecting the team members carefully becomes critical.
When evaluating the original idea for the project (planning phase), the groups of people who would potentially benefit from or be affected by the idea are identified. To ensure the project meets everyone’s needs, representatives from each group should participate in the project; but to get anything done, you cannot effectively work with that many people. To include everyone yet keep the team small enough to collaborate effectively, establish a full team with full representation, then establish a core team to do the day-to-day work of the project. The core team should not have more than five or six people on it at a time. If the project is very large, it should be broken into smaller pieces with one small core team assigned to each functional area.
In this respect, the project team is much like a sports team. The success of the season depends on all members of the team. However, only a limited number of core players can be on the field at any one time. Using this technique prevents chaos on the field.
The Role of the Full Team
The full team serves as the steering and oversight committee. It includes representatives from all areas that are directly or indirectly affected by the projector that have changes in responsibility resulting from the project. The team members have regular status meetings and are responsible for ensuring that their departments or other related individuals are kept informed of the project’s status. Each team member has access to all project documentation and is asked to provide comments and suggestions.
Minimally, the AM/FM/GIS project team should have key members from the users organizations and the technical staff. In general, the joint vendor/client team members should hold the following project responsibilities: Project Managers; Technical Leads; Subject-Matter Experts; Current and Prospective Users; Soflware Analysts, Designers, and Developers; Software Quality Assurance/Quality Control Staffi Managers of Affected User Communities; Technical Writers; and Support Staff. Including representatives from these different groups allows collaboration among the participants and a view of the different perspectives. This blending of ideas leads to a better definition of the requirements of the project, which in turn leads a solution that better meets the needs of all involved.
In the utilities environment, ideas for projects frequently come from or have an impact on the user organization. The vendor/client team should include representatives from the user (client) organizations because they are the experts in their business. From the client’s user groups, subject-matter experts are identified to serve on the team because they are knowledgeable in the business areas affected by the application.
The Role of the Core Team
The core team is a subset of the full team that is responsible for doing the day-to-day work in the project. The members of this team work together to analyze, define and document the project requirements, design the system, build the application, test and document it.
The members of the core team will change somewhat over the course of the project, depending on the skills required at each phase. For the development of the requirements and system, the core team should minimally include those who have the critical knowledge required for the project (subject-matter experts from the user community), those who know how to convert that knowledge into analysis and design documents (technical experts), and the technical writers to document the results.
Selecting the right core team members is critical. Select those from the user community who have the critical knowledge, can share that knowledge with others, and are motivated to participate in the process. Define a good mix of individuals. Include a few dreamers and a few pragmatists. The dreamers will help think of ideas when detailed problems arise, and the pragmatists will help apply these ideas.
The leader of the core team must be a good listener and be able to ask the right questions. This leader may bean experienced facilitator, the project manager, or the lead technical person. This decision will depend on the specific situation and experience of the team members.
Regardless of the core team’s size, key roles need to be filled on the AM/FM/GIS project team. The respective roles and job descriptions are listed below.
Development Stages of Teams and Team Members
The behavioral model of teamwork patterns consists of two dimensions [Lefton, 1980]: Getting Things Done and Building Strong Teamwork Relationships. The model (shown in Figure 1) uses these two dimensions to define four distinct patterns, or “stages,” of teamwork and its individual members’ behavior: Stage l—Forming; Stage 2—Storming; Stage 3—Norming; Stage 4- Performing.
Figure 1. Dimensional Model of Teamwork and Team Member Patterns
Figure 2 lists typical characteristics of team members and teams in each of the four stages.
Stage 1: Forming—Immaturity
Figure 2. Team and Team Member Behavior Characteristics
The validity of the team development stages has been well established in observations of real-world teams, including AM/FM/GIS teams. Disruptive, ineffective, and unproductive team behavior is classified as Forming or Storming, and a high-performance, self-directed team displays behavior characteristics along the Norzning to Performing continuum.
Teams and team members, when left to their own devices, do tend to emulate either the sequential, four-stage process, or they zigzag among the four quadrants shown in Figure 1,
Ideally, Performing (mature) teams develop missions, set goals, organize, and structure their activities to “get things done.” Team members “build strong teamwork relationships” by promoting open communication, sharing resources, coordinating, and fostering active participation while they are making decisions, solving problems, conducting meetings, or managing conflicts.
Team building does not stop once a team is set in place—it is an on-going process that must be managed carefully throughout the project’s life cycle phases. Team member changes should be kept to an absolute minimum. However, at times, teams must be restructured to replace members who leave the project voluntarily or because of elimination. To maintain consistency and to handle the transfer of project knowledge properly, at least the project managers and technical leads should remain on the project unless they are ineffective or leave the organization.
The following section focuses on the skills and techniques essential for synergy, to aid in taking a project team from Stage 1 (immaturity) to Stage 4 (maturity) with minimal Stage 2 or Stage 3 behavioral characteristics.
Team Synergy
Team synergy can be defined as the pooling of team resources to achieve results that are multiplicative, not just the sum of individual members’ contributions. The equation” 1 + 1 = 3“ may look like bad math, but imagine the results a team will achieve when disruptive conflict (for example) becomes productive synergy. Effective teams possess clear goals, positive inter-dependence, sense of empowerment, cohesion, and open communication.
Clear Goals
The three types of goal structures [Slevin, 1985] are:
Project team goals and individual team-member goals are important because they are guides to action, roles, and responsibilities. They point to indicators for evaluating team progress. Goals are useful for resolving conflicts and motivators for team members’ behaviors. The goals should be clear, observable, and cooperative. Indicators of unclear goals are low team-member motivation, distraction by side issues, and poor team problem-solving results.
Positive Inter-dependence
A mature team possesses positive inter-dependence among team member tasks, knowledge sharing, and relationships. Two ways to promote positive, inter-dependence are as follows:
An effective team needs to feel empowered to take whatever actions are needed to succeed. The organization doesn’t merely allow them to do what they think is right, it supports them in doing it. An empowered team knows that it can “push back” against the organization when it feels the organization is asking for something unreasonable or is headed in the wrong direction.
Teams should be given the latitude to make their own decisions and purchase needed supplies. The team is the joint, vendor/client organization between the companies that will “make” the project happen, or not. The companies should support the team by providing needed resources (for example, personnel, hardware/software), but must not meddle in the team business since they do not know the work, or the need of the team like the team itself.
The team leaders should delegate tasks to the team in a way that is challenging, clear, and supportive. Unleash the energy and talents of the team members. When a team isn’t functioning properly realize that most team problems arise from motivation, organization, or information. The organization and team leads should try to remove roadblocks related to these three factors.
Cohesion
A team is cohesive when members feel very much part of the team, when they get along and are satisfied with the team membership. Several benefits of cohesion are: members’ participation increases (as does the amount of resources available to the team); members’ satisfaction increases; members are motivated to achieve team goals; and team productivity increases.
Cohesion is advanced through high levels of inclusion, acceptance, support, and trust [McConnell, 1996], by:
Open Communication
Members of cohesive teams stay in touch with each other constantly. They are careful to see that everyone understands when they speak, and their communication is aided by their shared, common vision and sense of identity.
Team members express what they are feeling, even when it is uncomfortable. Sometimes team members have to present bad news: “My part of the project will take two weeks longer than originally estimated.” In an environment characterized by inter-dependence and trust, project members can broach uncomfortable subjects when they first notice them, when the team still has time to take effective corrective action. The alternative, covering up mistakes until they become too serious to overlook, is deadly to the project and team cohesiveness.
Summary
This paper has “scratched the surface” on project teamwork. The conclusion here is simple: Teamwork works. From a business perspective, teams are more productive, produce higher quality, and are more cost-efficient than solo efforts. From a human relations perspective, the positive effects of teamwork on job satisfaction, motivation, and employee morale have been well documented.
Teamwork is not a static process—it is a very dynamic, on-going process that must be managed and monitored carefully throughout the project. What may “fuel the fire” to keep the project progressing in its early stages may not work in latter stages. Be prepared to redesign the team and its processes as the project progresses.
References
Enterprises are under increasing pressure tore-engineer their business processes to become more cost-effective and efficient. Consequently, the demand to improve the process of developing and implementing advanced information technologies, such as AM/FM/GIS, continues to grow. While the use of project management tools and associated “best practices” covers part of the utility business spectrum, personnel issues will most often be the key factor that make or break a project.
This paper addresses the personnel issues by submitting that cooperative vendor and client teamwork will enhance work processes that continually support the dynamic AM/FM/GIS business, from planning through the execution of a project. The challenge ahead is to structure and manage the project team so that we can effectively deliver results to the client and benefits to the company and team.
Team Building
The entire definition and direction of an AM/FM/GIS project will come from the project team. With such significant responsibility, selecting the team members carefully becomes critical.
When evaluating the original idea for the project (planning phase), the groups of people who would potentially benefit from or be affected by the idea are identified. To ensure the project meets everyone’s needs, representatives from each group should participate in the project; but to get anything done, you cannot effectively work with that many people. To include everyone yet keep the team small enough to collaborate effectively, establish a full team with full representation, then establish a core team to do the day-to-day work of the project. The core team should not have more than five or six people on it at a time. If the project is very large, it should be broken into smaller pieces with one small core team assigned to each functional area.
In this respect, the project team is much like a sports team. The success of the season depends on all members of the team. However, only a limited number of core players can be on the field at any one time. Using this technique prevents chaos on the field.
The Role of the Full Team
The full team serves as the steering and oversight committee. It includes representatives from all areas that are directly or indirectly affected by the projector that have changes in responsibility resulting from the project. The team members have regular status meetings and are responsible for ensuring that their departments or other related individuals are kept informed of the project’s status. Each team member has access to all project documentation and is asked to provide comments and suggestions.
Minimally, the AM/FM/GIS project team should have key members from the users organizations and the technical staff. In general, the joint vendor/client team members should hold the following project responsibilities: Project Managers; Technical Leads; Subject-Matter Experts; Current and Prospective Users; Soflware Analysts, Designers, and Developers; Software Quality Assurance/Quality Control Staffi Managers of Affected User Communities; Technical Writers; and Support Staff. Including representatives from these different groups allows collaboration among the participants and a view of the different perspectives. This blending of ideas leads to a better definition of the requirements of the project, which in turn leads a solution that better meets the needs of all involved.
In the utilities environment, ideas for projects frequently come from or have an impact on the user organization. The vendor/client team should include representatives from the user (client) organizations because they are the experts in their business. From the client’s user groups, subject-matter experts are identified to serve on the team because they are knowledgeable in the business areas affected by the application.
The Role of the Core Team
The core team is a subset of the full team that is responsible for doing the day-to-day work in the project. The members of this team work together to analyze, define and document the project requirements, design the system, build the application, test and document it.
The members of the core team will change somewhat over the course of the project, depending on the skills required at each phase. For the development of the requirements and system, the core team should minimally include those who have the critical knowledge required for the project (subject-matter experts from the user community), those who know how to convert that knowledge into analysis and design documents (technical experts), and the technical writers to document the results.
Selecting the right core team members is critical. Select those from the user community who have the critical knowledge, can share that knowledge with others, and are motivated to participate in the process. Define a good mix of individuals. Include a few dreamers and a few pragmatists. The dreamers will help think of ideas when detailed problems arise, and the pragmatists will help apply these ideas.
The leader of the core team must be a good listener and be able to ask the right questions. This leader may bean experienced facilitator, the project manager, or the lead technical person. This decision will depend on the specific situation and experience of the team members.
Regardless of the core team’s size, key roles need to be filled on the AM/FM/GIS project team. The respective roles and job descriptions are listed below.
| Team Member | Responsibilities |
| Project Manager | Directs the project. Defines when to bring in which participants, listens well, watches carefully, knows how to get the participants to cooperate, works toward consensus wherever possible, and decides when to end each step. Responsible for keeping project within budget, within schedule, and within agreed-upon scope. |
| Technical Lead | Designs the software and coordinates the technical input for the design documentation. Ensures the inter-company technical communication. Supervises the functional-area activities of the project implementation personnel. Monitors the project progress with the Project Manager. |
| Consultant/Analyst | Designs the customized software. Performs programming tasks required to develop the custom software according to the requirements. |
| QA/QC Analyst | Reviews the system requirements to ensure that they are clear, consistent, traceable, and testable. Develops test plan using the design documentation. Verifies incremental, software deliveries prior to shipped to client. Performs regressiordintegration testing. Conducts acceptance testing using test plan. |
| Technical Writer | Creates and maintains the formal project documents. |
Development Stages of Teams and Team Members
The behavioral model of teamwork patterns consists of two dimensions [Lefton, 1980]: Getting Things Done and Building Strong Teamwork Relationships. The model (shown in Figure 1) uses these two dimensions to define four distinct patterns, or “stages,” of teamwork and its individual members’ behavior: Stage l—Forming; Stage 2—Storming; Stage 3—Norming; Stage 4- Performing.
Figure 1. Dimensional Model of Teamwork and Team Member Patterns
Figure 2 lists typical characteristics of team members and teams in each of the four stages.
Stage 1: Forming—Immaturity
- Tentative attachment to team; working relationships are cautious and noncommittal.
- Suspicion, anxiety about why they are there, who will lead, and what they wil do.
- Productivity is low.
- Little real communication.
- Impatience and fi-ustration with lack of progress.
- Overly competitive, confrontational, and often resistant to goals..
- Self-serving attitude; little regard for needs of team members or clients (or vendor).
- One-way communication.
- Cooperative team relationships are emphasized, even at expense of productivity.
- Team shows concern for the needs of team members.
- Focus on building harmony and managing conflict.
- Communication is open in all directions.
- High productivity as a result of working collaboratively toward common goals, with a clear mission, roles, and expectations.
- Agreement on who they are, what they are doing, and where they are going.
- Ability to prevent or work through tough team issues; open, relevant communication.
The validity of the team development stages has been well established in observations of real-world teams, including AM/FM/GIS teams. Disruptive, ineffective, and unproductive team behavior is classified as Forming or Storming, and a high-performance, self-directed team displays behavior characteristics along the Norzning to Performing continuum.
Teams and team members, when left to their own devices, do tend to emulate either the sequential, four-stage process, or they zigzag among the four quadrants shown in Figure 1,
Ideally, Performing (mature) teams develop missions, set goals, organize, and structure their activities to “get things done.” Team members “build strong teamwork relationships” by promoting open communication, sharing resources, coordinating, and fostering active participation while they are making decisions, solving problems, conducting meetings, or managing conflicts.
Team building does not stop once a team is set in place—it is an on-going process that must be managed carefully throughout the project’s life cycle phases. Team member changes should be kept to an absolute minimum. However, at times, teams must be restructured to replace members who leave the project voluntarily or because of elimination. To maintain consistency and to handle the transfer of project knowledge properly, at least the project managers and technical leads should remain on the project unless they are ineffective or leave the organization.
The following section focuses on the skills and techniques essential for synergy, to aid in taking a project team from Stage 1 (immaturity) to Stage 4 (maturity) with minimal Stage 2 or Stage 3 behavioral characteristics.
Team Synergy
Team synergy can be defined as the pooling of team resources to achieve results that are multiplicative, not just the sum of individual members’ contributions. The equation” 1 + 1 = 3“ may look like bad math, but imagine the results a team will achieve when disruptive conflict (for example) becomes productive synergy. Effective teams possess clear goals, positive inter-dependence, sense of empowerment, cohesion, and open communication.
Clear Goals
The three types of goal structures [Slevin, 1985] are:
- Individualistic (not inter-dependent), where team members perceive that the achievement of their goals is unrelated to the goal attainment by the other members.
- Competitive (negative inter-dependent), where team members perceive that they can achieve their goals if and only if the other members do not achieve their goals; and,
- Cooperative (positive inter-dependence), where team members perceive that they can achieve their goals if and only if the other members achieve their goals.
Project team goals and individual team-member goals are important because they are guides to action, roles, and responsibilities. They point to indicators for evaluating team progress. Goals are useful for resolving conflicts and motivators for team members’ behaviors. The goals should be clear, observable, and cooperative. Indicators of unclear goals are low team-member motivation, distraction by side issues, and poor team problem-solving results.
Positive Inter-dependence
A mature team possesses positive inter-dependence among team member tasks, knowledge sharing, and relationships. Two ways to promote positive, inter-dependence are as follows:
- Goals. Team members are encouraged that the success in reaching both individual and team goals depends on all members. On a team-based project, everyone reaches the finish line, or no one reaches it. For example, in a sport, such as Olympic sailing, its important to know what the individuals goals are, as well as, the team goals in order to make it across the finish line ahead of the competition. Differing goals, meaning goals outside those that are good for the team and the project, can steer the team off course. For an AM/FM/GIS project, differing goals can be a major factor in causing schedule slippage and eventual cost overruns. The vendor and client are “in the boat” together to complete the project within schedule and budget. Its up to the team to make sure each member is “rowing in the correct direction” so that the end result is overall satisfaction with the project and the team experience.
- Motivators. The team leadership must learn to tap into the members’ internal motivations. They must create an environment in which the members can satisfy their internal drives. When people are excited about their work, their chance for career growth, and the next challenge ahead, they will do whatever it takes (including putting in long hours) to meet both their individual and the team objectives. Several team and team members motivators (or aids) are listed below:
- Everyone is Rewarded, or No One is Rewarded. Remember, the overall objective of an AM/FM/GIS project team is to deliver a quality system to the client that is not only timely, but within budget. The team leadership and organization should focus efforts on rewarding the entire team, when deserved, rather than the individual members. This will foster teamwork among the members and keep “grandstanding or heroics” to a minimum. Remember, competition is outside the organization (or company) - avoid any situations or standards that may breed infighting.
- Ownership/ ’’Buy-in. “ If you want the members to “buy-into” the idea, they must be included in the decisions surrounding the idea. Not involving the team members in decisions that affect them creates the impression that the leadership doesn’t care about the individual members or that the leadership doesn’t respect them enough to want their contributions. Here are classic cases in which the leadership must
involve the members to keep their motivation high: committing to new schedules, designing the system, participatory decision making, committing to new development procedures, changing hardware and software tools, and volunteering team members for short-term assignments outside the project.
Three reasons for involving the team members in these decisions are: 1) increases decision quality; 2) increases members’ allegiance to the team (and vice-versa); and 3) increases team members commitment to implement the decision (and vice-versa). - Praise in Public, Punish in Private. One of the best way to destroy a team member’s allegiance to the team is to punish them in public. It not only festers resentment from the punished toward the offender, but also can cause the other members to gloat that they’re superior to such behavior. Team member correction should be prompt, quick, and in person so that the intent of what is being conveyed between the parties involved is clear. On the flip-side, public praise is acceptable but should be directed toward the entire team. Public praise on an individual basis is discouraged, since it can breed negative competition between the team members to try and outdo one another, leading to unplanned team divisions.
An effective team needs to feel empowered to take whatever actions are needed to succeed. The organization doesn’t merely allow them to do what they think is right, it supports them in doing it. An empowered team knows that it can “push back” against the organization when it feels the organization is asking for something unreasonable or is headed in the wrong direction.
Teams should be given the latitude to make their own decisions and purchase needed supplies. The team is the joint, vendor/client organization between the companies that will “make” the project happen, or not. The companies should support the team by providing needed resources (for example, personnel, hardware/software), but must not meddle in the team business since they do not know the work, or the need of the team like the team itself.
The team leaders should delegate tasks to the team in a way that is challenging, clear, and supportive. Unleash the energy and talents of the team members. When a team isn’t functioning properly realize that most team problems arise from motivation, organization, or information. The organization and team leads should try to remove roadblocks related to these three factors.
Cohesion
A team is cohesive when members feel very much part of the team, when they get along and are satisfied with the team membership. Several benefits of cohesion are: members’ participation increases (as does the amount of resources available to the team); members’ satisfaction increases; members are motivated to achieve team goals; and team productivity increases.
Cohesion is advanced through high levels of inclusion, acceptance, support, and trust [McConnell, 1996], by:
- Structuring cooperation among members (for example, in decision making);
- Meeting the personal needs of members (for example, extra time off from work);
- Building and maintaining a high level of trust through openness and sharing; and,
- Implementing appropriate group norms, whereby norms are common beliefs regarding appropriate behavior for members that is not imposed on a team but evolve out of the interaction of team members.
Open Communication
Members of cohesive teams stay in touch with each other constantly. They are careful to see that everyone understands when they speak, and their communication is aided by their shared, common vision and sense of identity.
Team members express what they are feeling, even when it is uncomfortable. Sometimes team members have to present bad news: “My part of the project will take two weeks longer than originally estimated.” In an environment characterized by inter-dependence and trust, project members can broach uncomfortable subjects when they first notice them, when the team still has time to take effective corrective action. The alternative, covering up mistakes until they become too serious to overlook, is deadly to the project and team cohesiveness.
Summary
This paper has “scratched the surface” on project teamwork. The conclusion here is simple: Teamwork works. From a business perspective, teams are more productive, produce higher quality, and are more cost-efficient than solo efforts. From a human relations perspective, the positive effects of teamwork on job satisfaction, motivation, and employee morale have been well documented.
Teamwork is not a static process—it is a very dynamic, on-going process that must be managed and monitored carefully throughout the project. What may “fuel the fire” to keep the project progressing in its early stages may not work in latter stages. Be prepared to redesign the team and its processes as the project progresses.
References
- Lefton, R. E., Buzzotta, V. R., Sherberg M., 1980, Improving Productivity Through People Skills, Chapter 18 (Teams and Teamwork).
- McConnell, S., 1996, Rapid Development, Chapter 12.3 (Creating a High-Performance Team), pp. 285-287.
- Slevin, D. P., 1985, Executive Survival Manual: A Program for Managerial Effectiveness.