Team SuccGroup suceess

Group Project Teams can encounter pressure when endeavoring to meet customer requirements. An important question is, what are the key success factors for teams? The Navy has characterized the key success factors as: (Martha Menchaca, 76-89)

Team leadership: the ability of the team leader to lead and develop the team.

Shared vision/approach: A vision and mission that all team members accept and share. It also includes full agreement by team participants on the team's approach to carrying out its responsibilities.

Team collaboration: Team members working closely together with no hidden agendas and mutually supporting each other and team goals.

Empowerment: Team and team member capability, and authorization to represent their organization, make decisions, and/or take action.

Technology support: How much and how well technology supports team needs.

Team learning: The ability of a team to continuously learn, question old assumptions, and improve its ability to take effective action.

Enterprise partnering: A program or continuous activity to establish partnering relationships with stakeholders in the enterprise.

Feedback: A program or continuous activity to get feedback from customers and other key stakeholders on how well the team and its program are doing.

Team collocation: The percentage of team members located in the same local space. (Martha Menchaca, 76-89)

Team size: The number of full-time members on the IPT.

Team dynamics can be both constructive and destructive depending on how well they are managed by the team. A team's awareness of how to manage conflict, facilitate problem solving opportunities, and support one another are critical to its ability to become a high performing team. In order to create the greatest likelihood of a team's dynamics generating success, be sure to take into consideration team size, team goals and values, team member traits or attributes, and educate the leaders, facilitators, and followers on the techniques to generate constructive conflict in order to deliver synergistic results. Conflict well managed creates a strong cohesive team. If not managed, the team is unlikely to be successful. Project management methods and tools are increasingly relevant as today's globalizing organizations accomplish more of their goals using project teams. The increased diversity of skills, knowledge, cultures, and perspectives and even geographical aspect of these project teams can potentially have both positive and negative influences on group processes and outcomes. The question then, to what extent can and do project management methods and tools benefit diverse teams while mitigating its challenges? In order ...