CHAPTER 1

Significance of Teams

Objectives:

• Understand what project teams are and how they can be implemented.

• Learn the impact project teams can have on an organization.

• Recognize the relationship between the project life cycle and project team cycle.

• Realize the project team development stages.

Preview

In this chapter, the focus is on the basic structure and characteristics of teams and the impact that teams have on operational efficiency and effectiveness. The chapter begins by explaining the difference between different groups, including their formation and degree of cohesiveness. The chapter illustrates the different strata of groups, and their position in the workplace. Project teams receive the most emphasis, and the life cycle of project teams is explained so that readers can effectively harness the power of project teams in the future. The development of teams is highlighted due to the integral nature of group origination.

Introduction

Being a member of a team is the norm of work life and it is unavoidable. The ability to work with other individuals and in teams is a critical competency that employers often look for in hiring decisions. Perhaps, one may think that only discipline-specific skills are considered for selection and recruitment. However, selection on the basis of technical skills alone may be a thing of the past. Good organizations look for one’s ability to work with others collaboratively, and to communicate effectively. Discipline-specific skills are essential but not sufficient. Studies show that people lose their jobs often for lack of interpersonal skills.

The very basis of forming organizations is to bring people together to work for a common purpose. Organizations are managed through formation of divisions, departments, task forces, and teams for efficiency and effectiveness. When referring to people working together in an organization or outside of it, these collaborative efforts are often referred to terms such as groups and teams. A recent study² suggests that successful organizations encourage informal and collaborative relationships, thereby promoting team culture at the organization level.

Groups

Groups come together either in an organization or outside of it. A group consists of two or more people with a common relationship. Community groups for voluntary services, for fun, or social cause (sports fans or fan clubs, associations) are often formed outside formal corporate structures. Groups are integral to our lives and provide security, and opportunities to interact socially, manage complexity, bring people together, and facilitate an exchange of knowledge.

In an organizational context, a group can also be formal or informal, official or unofficial, task oriented or relationship oriented or both, permanent or temporary, and colocated or physically dispersed. Divisions and departments can be termed as formal groups, and they are often associated with formal structures such as business organizations and associations. Informal groups such as communities of practice and informal networks, in addition to formal work groups, are often integral to organizations.

• Communities of practice are formed to support each other and develop the capabilities of their members. Individual members have a choice to join this group due to passion, commitment, or expertise in a specific discipline. This group is not bound by time.

• Informal networks are formed within organizations for mutual needs and support. Members support each other by sharing business information. In many cases, informal networks are as effective as formal groups in delivering organizational goals. Informal networks are also not time bound.

• Formal groups are created to deliver products or services. Members become part of the formal group due to their job responsibilities and often report to the group’s leader or manager to facilitate working toward a common goal.

People with common interests and similar attitudes tend to join informal networks voluntarily and work together to help each other and increase job satisfaction. Although informal social interactions are voluntary, research suggests that the organizational structure influences the structure of informal networks. National cultures also influence the structure, incidence, and cohesiveness of informal structures. It is easy and natural to form informal networks in countries like Japan and India, whereas it could be different in individualistic societies like the United States.

Informal networks transfer information that gives rise to attitude similarity, imitation, and the generation of innovations. Additionally, such networks mediate transactions among organizations, cooperation among persons, and give differential access to resources and power.⁴ One must remember that informal networks can have both positive and negative impact on the organization.

The most natural and common informal group is the family. Informal groups are not often governed by externally imposed rules and regulations although social norms prevail. In general, informal groups set their own governing principles and goals. Every one of us belongs to a group or a few informal groups.

Working groups in organizations consist of people who do not necessarily depend on each other and do not share a common goal. However, working groups share information and knowledge to do their jobs better.

Teams

Teams are usually comprised of a small number of people with complementary skills working together with a common purpose and commitment toward a goal. A team always has a shared obligation or commitment. We find various definitions of a team in the literature (Table 1.1).

From the definitions listed in the Table 1.1, one can identify a few common factors of a team such as common purpose or goal, interdependence due to mutual accountability and collective responsibility, diverse skills, information sharing, and collaborative efforts. A team is a selected group of individuals with diverse and complimentary skills who are required to work together collaboratively for a predetermined period and are collectively responsible to meet a specific purpose or goal.

Table 1.1 Team definitions

Definition	Source
A team is “a group of individuals with mutual accountability that work interdependently to solve problems or carry out work.”	Kirkman and Mathieu (2005, 701)
A team is “a group of individuals who work together under a unity of purpose, as a united front.”	Kezsbom (1995, 480)
A team is “a small number of people with complimentary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.”	Katzenbach and Smith (1993, 112)
A team is “a collection of individuals who are interdependent in their tasks, who share responsibility for outcomes, who see themselves and who are seen by others as an intact social entity embedded in one or more larger social systems, and who manage their relationship across organizational boundaries.”	Cohen and Bailey (1997, 241)
Teaming is “an act that occurs whenever two or more people communicate with each other, formally or informally, in an enabling environment characterized by individual innovation and collective consensus.”	Shuster (1999, 196)

Teams could be categorized into six types:⁵ (1) project, (2) production, (3) service, (4) action/performing, (5) management, and (6) parallel. The first four teams are temporal to a great extent and adapt planning, strategy, and goal-setting approaches, whereas management and parallel team activities involve analyzing situations, formulating strategies, and setting goals.⁶

From a different perspective, teams are formed to recommend actions, execute tasks, or manage operations in organizations. Recommending actions is often assigned to a task force. Project and manufacturing tasks are associated with executing or doing things. A variety of teams are found in organizations such as global teams, virtual teams, distributed teams, and global project teams. Definitions of broad categories of teams are included in Table 1.2.

Table 1.2 Types of teams definitions

Definition	Source
Virtual team comprises of individuals who are geographically and/or organizationally dispersed, working together through telecommunication to accomplish organizational tasks.	Townsend, DeMarie, and Hendrickson (1998)
Multicultural team is “a group of people from different cultures, with a joint deliverable for the organization or the stakeholder.”	Stahl et al. (2010, 439)
Distributed team is “groups of geographically dispersed employees with a common goal carrying out interdependent tasks using mostly technology for communication and collaboration.”	Bosch-Sijtsema, Ruohomäki, and Vartiainen (2009, 534)

Distinction Between Groups and Teams

Unlike groups, teams are not generally formed voluntarily. They are explicitly designed and developed to meet specific goals of the organization. So, teams usually exist in formal organization structures. Needless to say, the organization’s structure, culture, power, authority, and politics influence a team’s effectiveness and productivity.

Groups are usually formed on a long-term basis as compared to teams, and they last much longer than teams. Teams are disbanded after the goal is achieved. For example, a team comprising of several team members, assigned for an airport construction project, is assigned to new projects or tasks once the airport construction is complete, whereas the airport operations group is formed during the final stages of its construction and continues to function as a group as long as the airport is providing service to airlines and commuters.

Compared to groups, a team always has a common goal. Furthermore, teams are distinct as compared to other groups; a team is characterized by a group of individuals for their accountability, specific roles and responsibilities, interdependent and interrelated tasks, and collective performance. Also, teams can be quickly assembled, deployed, refocused, and disbanded. The essential features of teams and groups are captured in Table 1.3.

Table 1.3 Groups and teams

Groups	Teams
Focused, strong leader Individual responsibility and accountability Group and organization’s purposes are same Structured and efficient meetings Individual performance and outcome Long-term duration	Shared and collective leadership Individual and collective accountability Team purpose is different from that of the organization Open-ended and problem-solving meetings Collective performance and outcome Teams are disbanded after achieving the goal

Source: Adapted from Katzenbach and Smith (1993).

The nature and reason for the formation of a group or team would influence its cohesiveness and effectiveness. Imagine being part of the team for planning and organizing the Tokyo 2020 Olympics! Expectations and support from the public and businesses within Japan would be very high. The team’s motivation, collaboration, cohesiveness, and commitment would be at a very high level, as one cannot imagine a bigger and more prestigious project than the Olympics.

Unlike teams, groups do not necessarily engage in collective work that requires interdependent effort. Therefore, all teams are groups but not all groups are teams. Teams focus on both individual and collective performance and discipline, whereas other forms of groups rely on individuals for group performance.

Project Teams

A project team comprises a selected group of individuals with complimentary skills and disciplines who are required to work together on interdependent and interrelated tasks for a predetermined period to meet a specific purpose or goal.

Project teams are formed to accomplish a specific project goal or a task and these teams are temporary. The senior management, project management office (PMO), or sometimes the project manager/leader select the project team members to work toward a common purpose or goal. It is important for project teams to work together well, and team synergy is of critical importance. Once the project is complete, the team members are assigned to other projects and the team is disbanded.

Project teams can be traditional colocated teams, virtual teams, and global project teams. Virtual teams are geographically dispersed either nationally or internationally, whereas global project teams are often virtual teams in which team members are dispersed geographically across national boundaries. In both cases, interaction and communication among the project teams take place electronically. The geographical distance in a virtual team can vary widely. Sometimes, people from different divisions of the same organization, located in different buildings, can be part of a virtual team.

Global projects employ virtual teams, and the project manager must lead these teams by playing a directive role predominantly and establishing clearly defined processes. The leadership role must be established first and clearly defined processes help in establishing trust. Decision making presents challenges due to culture-tampered varying approaches and styles. Finally, communicating electronically requires higher competency levels in written communication and reading comprehension.

Importance of Project Teams

Being a member of a group or team is an inevitable feature of modern work life. Being a member of a team is essential for projects and project management. Project teams are required for the organization to be more productive, flexible, and responsive to change.

Projects are vehicles for organizations to meet their strategic goals of growth, innovation, expansion of business, entry to new markets, new product development, and so forth. In the current global economy, organizations are bound to deliver products and services faster, better, and cheaper due to increased competition in the marketplace. Furthermore, organizations are motivated to reduce hierarchy for productivity gains and effectiveness. Consequently, organization structures are becoming lean and flat, which compel them to delegate authority and responsibility. Also, the global economy compels organizations to deal with complex problems and increased complexity in decision making. Under these circumstances, individuals acting alone may no longer have enough knowledge and skills to make decisions. These challenges underscore the importance of project teams.

Projects are executed in teams that aim for outcomes, which demand skills and expertise from multiple disciplines. Project management generally requires skills from disciplines that include but are not limited to organizational behavior, management, human resources, quality assurance, quantitative methods, finance, accounting, information systems, entrepreneurship, innovation, marketing, and economics. As projects demand multiple skills and discipline to improve success and enhance performance, project teams typically outperform individuals.

In general, projects are managed using teams in a complex work environment for two reasons: first, each project is unique, and second, conditions for team selection and motivation are often far from ideal. Uniqueness contributes to issues such as unknowns, uncertainties, technical complexity, and risk. Bringing together a group of people to collaborate for a cohesive effort presents many people-related challenges such as interpersonal relations and behavioral issues. In addition to uniqueness and complexity, unfamiliarity is often described as one of the characteristics of projects and as a result, projects are often associated with change and risk. Consequently, strong leadership, that provides vision and ability to cope with change, is a must for successful project performance.

Characteristics of Project Teams

Like any other team, a project team goes through phases of forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Transitioning from one phase to the other and time spent during each phase would depend on the organizational work culture, familiarity, and behavioral issues. Furthermore, the urgency (project schedule), complexity, unknowns, risks, and costs associated with the project also influence the team-development phases and transition.

Needless to say, project characteristics influence project team composition and characteristics. The leadership and management styles of the project manager during each of these phases would also be different. The project management life-cycle phases of initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling, and closing would also influence project team development and management (Figure 1.1).

Furthermore, project team size would also depend on the project characteristics such as size of the project, technology, complexity, and diverse and complimentary skill set necessary to develop project deliverables. Although the size of many project teams falls within the normal team size range of 5 to 50 members, mega projects tend to have much larger project teams. Although teams outperform individuals, large project teams, often associated with mega projects, face several issues and constraints with respect to coordination and logistics. For example, one may have to deal with more people, thereby increasing the number of communication channels, more disciplines and functions, and coordination among greater numbers of individuals.

Often, selection of the project manager is based on having a high level of interpersonal and decision-making skills as managing people of diverse disciplines and skills for a coordinated and collaborative effort is very challenging. The need for diversity and expertise of team members and their selection would be determined by technical or functional expertise, problem-solving challenges, and decision-making skills required for project success. Interpersonal skills are equally important for project team selection.

Figure 1.1 Project and team phases

Projects (and project teams) are also characterized by predetermined completion dates for their performance goals and tasks. Consequently, project teams cannot afford to delay the start of their teamwork and effective collaboration. Perhaps, it is one of the reasons why organizations encourage project teams to develop a team charter and responsibility matrix as quickly as practicable. It is also important for many project teams to transfer administrative and technical responsibility immediately after completing the project. Like any other team, project teams can be creative and productive by promoting participation, cooperation, and collaboration among the team members.

The project teams are also collectively accountable for project success and project management success. It is the responsibility of the team to complete the project on time, within budget, and develop project deliverables as per specifications while satisfying various key stakeholders. Therefore, project teams demand a strong sense of commitment to project goals.

Performance of Projects and Project Teams

Project success is comprised of standards or criteria that assess project outcomes or results. Over time, project success has evolved from narrow but universally accepted criteria of scope, cost, and time to include other criteria viewed from different perspectives. Additions include measures such as meeting enterprise strategic and financial objectives, and client and end-user satisfaction. These are broadly divided into internal and external factors. Internal project factors are the factors that the project manager and the project team control over time, cost, and performance. External client factors are usefulness, satisfaction, and effectiveness of the project outcome. However, these external success factors cannot be measured until the project is complete; the only way to assure them during the project execution, to a certain extent, is to understand client needs and translate them into specifications of the project deliverables.

In other words, project management success is viewed as the internal measure of efficiency, while project success is concerned with the project’s external effectiveness. It is important to recognize that project management success factors of time, cost, and quality would also ensure project outcome success. Furthermore, one should recognize that project management success is a result of managing resources, specifically human resources. To state succinctly, the success of the project would include success of the implementation team in crafting the deliverable, together with the success of the enterprise in reaping benefits from the deliverable.

Project teams have a common purpose of delivering project outcomes within scope, time, and budget. Thus, the common purpose is translated into several performance goals. The common purpose tends to bind the team together, and performance goals motivate collaboration and synergy among the team members.

Project goals are unique to every project and these goals tend to be unambiguous, measurable, and tangible. Project goals that are defined with clarity facilitate project teams to perform better as a team, motivate individual team members, improve communication, and serve as a guiding light to manage conflicts. The more specific the performance goals are, the better it is to enhance overall team performance. For this to happen, project teams will have to spend enormous time in understanding client requirements and translating them into clearly defined specifications or attributes of project deliverables. Successful team approaches are listed in Table 1.4.

For any project team to adopt these successful team approaches, organizations and project team leaders have a lot of groundwork to do.

Developing Successful Project Teams

The purpose of this book is to provide an overview of selecting, structuring, developing, and managing project teams to improve collaborative effort and productivity in managing projects successfully.

A detailed exploration of team development is presented, including understanding social and behavioral issues and developing team processes to address such issues, and team management matters in regard to conflict resolution and stress management. All of these items are of importance in the development of high-performing project teams (Figure 1.2).

First, organizations should have culture to promote teamwork by structuring teams that support collaboration and synergy. A team structure design largely depends on the organization structure and organization culture. Furthermore, senior management must understand the importance of instilling a work culture that recognizes social and behavioral issues at an individual level and to transition individuals from self-identity to self-managed high-performance teams with higher levels of emotional intelligence. All these team structure and development issues are discussed at length in the next chapter.

Table 1.4 Successful team approaches

Define roles and responsibilities, communicate expectations, establish urgency, and demand performance. Teams work better when they know what is expected of them unambiguously and by defining performance ethics. Creating compelling context would motivate them to work together and hard. Independence and accountability are considered important.

Focus on individual strengths, skill, skill potential, and personality. Team success depends on harnessing individual strengths, aspirations, skills, and personality. All these factors should be taken into consideration while assigning the role and responsibility of each team member. Efficiency and effectiveness are the goals.

Use initial meetings and actions to create cohesiveness. Initial meetings must be used to set informal ground rules. It is important to curb negative emotions to improve cohesiveness. Team lead must pay attention to curb negative emotions and encourage friendship among the team members.

Develop a team charter. To be successful as a team, it is important to set clear rules and norms by developing a team charter that outlines performance expectations and behavioral norms such as mutual respect, courtesy, collaboration, attendance, and communication protocol. Collaboration is the main focus.

Place importance on informal meetings. Project leader must facilitate casual and informal get-together meetings and encourage personal interactions to understand and, develop friendship among the team members. It would enhance collaborative efforts and cohesion.

Update the team with project progress. Project progress information and new challenges motivate the project team to step up their effort, collaboration, and synergy among the team members. Determination to accomplish project goals is critical.

Emphasize on positive feedback, recognition, and reward. Project leaders must recognize efforts that lead to successful performance. Recognition, reward, and work satisfaction are important to motivate team members for higher performance.

Figure 1.2 Project team efficacy model

Second, organizations must focus on developing and sustaining team-related processes that would ensure continuity and continual improvement in team development. A team process is a facilitating method of linking team variables—organizational characteristics such as structure, culture, supporting systems, performance and incentive systems, employee morality, and top management support—with the team and its members. Interactions and dependencies among all the team variables could become complex. Successful organizations develop these team processes and ensure smooth functioning of these processes along with knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer process to nurture individual learning, team learning, and organizational learning. Ultimately, these processes are aimed to develop highly productive teams and to nurture growth of individuals to become team leaders. Team-related processes are discussed in Chapter 3 of this book.

Third, project teams require both management and leadership as stress and conflicts are bound to occur in project teams initially. By aligning goals or aspirations of individual team members with the project goals, and by investing time in understanding individual strengths and weaknesses, the project manager would be in a better position to define roles and responsibilities of individual team members, communicate expectations with clarity, motivate and influence individuals to align their interests with project goals, develop trust and higher levels of commitment. Consequently, the focus will be on management and leadership roles to do things right and doing right things, respectively. Establishing trust is a slow process and the project manager should, in addition to management and leadership roles, play a supportive role in nurturing growth, sharing knowledge, and encouraging participation in the decision-making process. The goal is to divide the task and multiply the success of the project team. Issues related to managing and leading teams are discussed at length in Chapter 4.

Fourth, it is important to identify practices and processes that would lead to development of highly productive project teams. With the global economy and free market philosophy, global virtual projects are becoming the norm and traditional teams that are colocated and communicate face-to-face are likely to become nontraditional. However, successful and promising practices and processes that assure high performance are different for traditional global project teams and colocated teams. Global project teams rely on electronic communication but have the advantage of including talented team members from several regions in the world, often at low cost. However, global project teams face additional challenges of managing cultural differences, absence of nonverbal and face-to-face communication methods, and difficulty in leading teams across national boundaries that include different social, political, cultural, business, and legal environments. These different sets of promising practices for traditional and global project teams are aimed at improving cooperation, participation, and collaboration, thereby resulting in higher levels of synergy, trust, motivation, and unified efforts. Characteristics of highly productive global project teams and traditional project teams are discussed in Chapters 5 and 6, respectively.

Going through the remaining chapters of the book, one may relate concepts, processes, and models presented in the book with project management experience to improve effectiveness as a member of the project team and as the project manager.

Questions:

1. Compare and contrast teams and groups.

2. How and why are project teams organized?

3. List some ways in which project managers can measure project team performance.

4. Relate project team development phases with the project life cycle. Are they project specific?

5. What traits and characteristics must be present for organizations to create successful project teams?

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¹ Nisen (2013).

² Towers Watson (2014).

³ projecthelping.org

⁴ Brass et al. (2004).

⁵ Sundstrom (1999).

⁶ Marks, Mathieu, and Zaccaro (2001).