Empower Team Members
In an effective team, each member is empowered to deliver on their own commitments and has confidence that, where they depend on the commitments of other team members, that these will also be met.
Effective teamwork provides members with the degree of empowerment they need to meet their commitments. In return, it relies on the integrity and motivation of all team members to:
- Be prepared to make commitments to others.
- Clearly define the commitments they undertake.
- Make every reasonable effort to deliver against those commitments.
- Communicate honestly as soon as they realize that a commitment may be at risk.
As soon as more than one person is needed for an activity, each participant’s efforts will be influenced by their dependencies on what other team members are doing. However they can’t spend time monitoring every dependency on which their own work may rely. Effective teams develop confidence that their colleagues are empowered and committed to the teams objectives.
Consider the analogy of an athletic relay team. When the runner for the second leg starts running, the runner doesnt slow down and look backwards to see how close the fore-runner is. Instead, the runner concentrates on accelerating as fast as possible and then simply stretches back to receive the baton, confident that it will be delivered. This confidence is based on practice, experience, and trust. In a complex project, team members need to develop a certain level of trust and this trust is built every time a commitment, however small, is met.
Focus on Business Value
Effective teamwork advocates basing team decisions on a sound understanding of the customers business and on active customer participation in project delivery.
Shared Project Vision
It is important to have a clear understanding of what the goals and objectives are for the project or process. Share Project Vision is one of the foundations of the MSF team model. When all participants understand and are working towards a shared vision, they are empowered by the ability to align their own decisions to the broader team purpose represented by that vision. Without a shared vision, team members may have competing views of the goal, making it much more difficult to deliver as a cohesive group.
It is important to have a clear understanding of what the goals and objectives are for the project or process. A shared vision brings those assumptions to light and ensures that all participants are working to accomplish the same goal.
When all participants understand and are working towards a shared vision, they are empowered by the ability to align their own decisions to the broader team purpose represented by that vision.
Foster Open Communications
Effective teamwork is supported by open and honest communications. A free-flow of information not only reduces the chances of misunderstandings and wasted effort, but also ensures that all team members can contribute to reducing uncertainties surrounding the project.
Placing equal value on each role involves all roles in key decisions. It is one reason why the shared team vision is regarded as the essential start to the solution delivery process. It strongly advocates the involvement of all team members in risk identification and analysis and promotes a no-blame culture to encourage this. Open, honest discussion about what is working well and what can be improved provides the basis for the learning environment.
There are a few important factors that may constrain the openness of the team’s communications, such as confidentiality of personal or commercial information. However, team members should question themselves whenever they decide to withhold information to ensure that the reasons for secrecy really are paramount. If they have built a relationship of trust through open communication, then on the rare occasions where they need to withhold information, they should be able to explain to their colleagues that there are over-riding reasons and ask for trust that these reasons are in the best interests of the project.
Stay Agile, Expect Change
Things are continually changing and that it is impossible to isolate a problem solution delivery project from these changes. Effective teamwork can ensure that all core roles are available throughout a project so that they can contribute to decisions arising from these changes. As new challenges arise, Effective teamwork fosters agility to address these issues. The contribution of all team roles to decision-making ensures that matters can be explored and reviewed from all critical perspectives.
Total Participation in Design
Each role participates in creating the product specification because each role has a unique perspective of the design and its relationship to their individual objectives, as well as the teams objectives. This fosters a climate in which the best ideas from the various team perspectives can come to the surface (1).
Motivated Teams Are Effective
Teams with low motivation suffer in two ways: Individually, the team members under-perform, leading to low quality and quantity of output; they also tend to work to narrow goals, and fail to appreciate the impact that their work has on colleagues. Both of these effects have a significant impact on IT projects, based as they are on a high degree of intellectual input and interaction.
MSF advocates devoting effort to building team morale and motivation. People who have worked at Microsoft recognize this as one of the companys defining characteristics. Techniques that can be used to build motivation are:
- Clarify team vision.
- Build team identity, using project code-names and team paraphernalia—mascots, t-shirts, beakers, and so on.
- Spend time getting to know colleagues by way of social or team events.
- Schedule team-building sessions where team members can experiment with different ways of collaborating and interacting, normally outside the work setting.
- Ensure that the individuals personal goals are considered, such as providing opportunities for personal or technical competency development, or managing the impact on work-life balance.
- Maximize the empowerment felt by individuals and listening to their views.
- Celebrate success.