Teamwork & Collaboration
Skunk Works – Ben R. Rich
Heavyweight Development Teams – Wheelwright & Clark
These two articles provide insight in the achievable benefits a group can achieve when the many risks involved in virtual teams and online collaboration have been mitigated.
Workgroups – Katzenbach
Katzenbach’s main argument is the divide between workgroups and effective team and questions the true necessity to develop employees to a closely knit group. This approach looks at teams from a minimalist-suffiency perspective.
Team Roles – Belbin
Belbin defines team roles as “a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way.”. Enabling a team or the individual to benefit from self-knowledge and providing opportunities for them to adjust accordingly to the situational demands creates a valuable approach in setting up a beneficial team structure.
His research puts forward that accurate delineation of team roles, a finite total of nine according to his research, is critical to understanding the dynamics of any management or work team. The exact number of roles is disputed by several other researchers, i.e. Senior (1998), where the main argument is whether or not Belbin’s distinctions are useful, whether certain overlaps cannot be combined and which roles have a mutually exclusive relationship. Another argument is the fact that distribution of roles does not follow a natural pattern among a general population of team member.
Senior provides evidence for this not being the case and presents evidence for certain roles being harder to find and a need for ‘cherishing’ certain characters. Also, the relative importance in terms of input and effective contribution to the team success in discussed. Nevertheless, among claims for identifying the ‘best-set’ of team role indicators, Belbin’s work is among the earliest and most widespread for contemplating about a ‘balanced team’.
Powell (2004) puts forward the role of ‘caretaker’, a more administrative position within team roles collaborating in a virtual setting. This proposition will be kept at the foreground of this research. Especially due to a possible relation to the ‘specialist’ role added later to the earlier eight roles a defined by Belbin.
/* Senior: thinking-doing, generalist-specialist, leader & communicator dimensions.
/* Senior: “… there is still the necessity for team members to be cared for as people as well as being driven to complete tasks. This is especially important for newly-formed teams where good and stable member interrelationships have yet to be developed.”
Learning, Team Composition & Mentoring –D. Clutterbuck
Sense making– Weich
Learning to Improvise, Improvising to Learn – Chelariu
Team Performance & Team Maturity : The ‘trough’ –P. David Elrod II & D.D. Tippett
The team performance curve, quoted from Katzenbach & Smith’s work, corresponds well with the five phases of organisational change
// Project Based Management – Turner
// Project Management Maturity Model – J. Gijsberts
// High Performance Teams – High Reliability Teams
?? To further complement the perspective on
General Processes
Virtual Teams & Online Collaboration
Groups interacting with technology – McGrath
Effects of E-Project Management – Qureshi
Coordination and Control –P.C. van Fenema
Elasticity – P.C. van Fenema
A review - A. Powell
Evers
Leadership challenges – Pearce
Maznevski
Communication and Trust in Global virtual Teams – S.L. Jarvenpaa & D. Leidner (1999)
Central Processes
Research
Personal Reflections
-Process Based Approaches
Research Directions
-Definitions
Introduction
Introduction
Abstract Problem
Social Loafing / Free-Riding
Current Software Gap
Theoretical Framework
Traditional Team Issues
The performance curve
Co-location vs. Distributedness
Team Learning & Shared Cognition
Team Roles
Team Leadership
Team Building
Task Focus
Team Types & Structures
Special Team Issues
Heavyweight Teams
Skunk Works
Other Rapid Development Organisations
IT Support Function
Virtual Teams
Web Collaboration
Towards a Framework
Qureshi
Evers
Initial Models
Introduction
Working together with colleagues or fellow students provides an opportunity to achieve a higher level of performance than could be achieved when working as an individual. But when engaging in a collaborative relationship certain risks arise due to loss of complete control over the outcome of the joint effort. One places trust upon the other individuals to coordinate and deliver according to agreed upon terms, a shared belief or knowledge of a desired result or, less explicit, intimate expectancies.
As soon as a team member notices that the outcome maybe of suboptimal or less than perfect, frustration arises. Issues such as co-ordination, division of labour and sense of responsibility rise to the surface of the interpersonal relationships. These issues then may be resolved through conflict resolution. Where total or effective commitment is not reached, the phenomenon of ‘free riding’ or ‘social-loafing’ comes into play.
Even with the advance in modern technology and the availability of process control mechanisms, the risk of the fore mentioned phenomenon occurring can not be significantly reduced. What has occurred is that teams or workgroups may achieve greater flexibility, specific effectiveness or general performance improvements when using any of the wide range of supporting facilities. But when co-location and face-to-face communication become a smaller part of the overall equation, the risk of failure rises substantially.
Whether working in an academic, corporate or other organisational environment does not matter with regard to the problems that teams encounter. Their setting is of more influence to the outcome of the research, than it is to the team result.
This research aims to discover which specific activities yield considerable benefit to the team performance when teams are interacting through a virtual setting and even making use of collaborative tools offered in an online environment. This is done mainly through literature study and a reflection upon case examples encountered by this research. The focus is put towards the activities engaged by the team in their build-up towards becoming an established team ready to engage with the challenges offered by their task or mission, rather than by the aspects of their mutual dependencies.
Abstract Problem
Social Loafing / Free-Riding
The risk of a team member not pulling their ‘full weight’ is an issue that can be approached from both the group as the individual. Has the group not provided sufficient and effective guiding for the ‘lost’ team member? On the other hand, has the individual lost contact with the group by his/her own account? It seems an interesting question for researching whether or not technology currently provides any tools for combating this loss of contact and contribution within groups.
Current Software Gap
From the wide range of software products available for supporting individuals and groups in understanding their cognitive processes or general performance tracking, this research has not found a package that covers the essential interaction dynamics to maintain a relevant position in the front-to-end process of idea conception to adoption by the mother organisation or entity that mandated the group to perform the certain task or activity.
The available products can be positioned along the dimensions of process support or technical communication support. The first dimension covers software that provides insight into the progress of the group’s activities towards a commonly defined goal. The second dimension is that of software that provides support in communication and information dispersion beyond the domain of writing, telephone and basic email.
Groupware seems to be a possible demarcation of the research area as it does provide a level of integrated software solutions, but is still organised around the process mentioned in the description of the first dimension, often referred to as project management. It may be possible to define the next generation from the findings of this research. Platform and modularity theory provides a promising starting point.
Theoretical Framework
For this research a distinction has been made between traditional working groups and teams, and groups that organise themselves and collaborate in a virtual setting and by using tools available in an online environment.
First, the team performance-team maturity empirical relationship (Elrod & Tippett, 1999) states an initial decline in team performance after …, but finds a renewed productivity …
Secondly, the relationship between underperforming virtual team in comparison to their traditional counterparts is studied.
Then, insights into traditional high performance teams and sociological theory on group dynamics are studied and related to virtual teams and online collaboration.
To finish the desk research and literature study and framework is constructed to provide an appropriate perspective for reflecting upon the chosen case examples where better usage of online collaboration tools and virtual team principles may have provided an outcome.
This section comprises the theoretical exploration of relevant themes relating to virtual teams and web collaboration. The issues encountered by conventional teams in literature relating to the main research area are stated first. Then, specific issues for high performance teams will be covered in more detail. The third theory section will cover aspect of the support function offered to the team by information technology.
Following the theory an initial attempt will be made to identify a framework and dimension for the empirical research effort to focus on.
Traditional Team Issues
Several factors have been selected from the studied materials that are closely related to the issues encountered by teams that conduct a major part of their collaboration through the possibilities offered by communication technology. As traditional teams are the next step after basic team coordination has been arranged, it is necessary to start closer to these teams than to directly delve into the more complex issues of virtual teams.
The performance curve
Tippett & Elrod (1999) have researched the change and implementation process of self-directed teams internal to the organisation with special interest for the team-individual and team-organisation boundaries as critical components of a team based entity. They have empirically researched the non-linear relationship between team maturity and team performance. Their main finding is that teams go through a pattern of initial decrease in performance levels which is followed by an end state having a net gain in performance levels. The horizontal axis in their graphs is defined by the team’s advance in maturity, being related to the five levels of maturity identified quoted from research by Katzenbach & Smith (work group, pseudo team, potential team, real team & high performance team). This process of team development can be characterised by the effectiveness of a team to implement teamwork, where focus on collective performance, mutual accountability and shared goals form dominant motivational factors in becoming a ‘real team’. Deep commitment to group effectiveness, individual growth and success are the factors that help a team becoming a ‘high performance team’. The decline in performance is defined to be the ‘trough’. Teams that persevere and manage to get out of this period of ‘disorder, uncertainty and chaos’ are often guided by a ‘common over-arching goal of unquestionable merit’.
Furthermore, Tippett & Elrod quote a list of performance indicators and teambuilding elements which will be used later to help build an initial research framework.
Co-location vs. Distributedness
Wheelwright & Clark (1992) pose the earliest notion on the need for co-location in the material studied by this research. They state that due to the complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity of development projects, physical co-location is preferred to ‘even the best of online communication approaches.
An article in PDBPR (1996) contains some first evidence of possibilities for distributed work or ‘rapid concurrent development’ to achieve adequate results for certain issues. Real-time information learning, cross functional problem-solving and efficient pooling of resources and support functions are offset by the advantage of distributed centres of excellence understanding and anticipating diverse global customers’ needs. Continuous activity and cross-functional integration are achieved by available knowledge and distribution being key indicators of relevant contribution to a project.
However, the most interesting quote states that if a team is able to spend the first 30% of a project closely together, extended physical co-location can be supplanted through virtual co-location or web collaboration.
Fenema (2002) underwrites this importance of face-to-face meetings for building relationships and understanding of, especially, a novel collective task i.e. prototyping(ed: development, implementation <- clarification issues). Additionally, situations in which cultural diversity plays a major part among project members require attention to developing a common area of interaction or knowledge base. Without a process of “selection and pre-socialisation”, a manager cannot make a justified claim upon project members’ local responsibility, let alone leverage a corporate or multinational hierarchy.
“dispersed functional variety – cross-functional issues solved locally (concept of CoP), functional issues solved through functional connection”.
Utilising asynchronous media: avoid “endless chain of clarification reqests”
From there on, the success of remote contact depends on project members’ proactive attitude and regular contact patterns to compensate for the lack of media richness, multi-modality and interactivity of face-to-face meetings.
Implications to coordination and control modes due to distributed work are identified by van Fenema (2002) in the form of time, geographical, governance, IT-infrastructure and cultural barriers.Geographical ‘distributedness’ brings challenges to cross-functional dependencies and managerial processes. Fenema states the novel concept of explicit awareness of knowledge and information dependence. With regards to information distribution, directness is important for transferring novel insights to the overall project team. Homogeneity means tailoring specific information elements to make them functionally relevant. This probably means that the same information needs different ‘wrappings’ to ensure that the involved specialists are more able to digest the general team information and provide specific functional input to the overall project. Functional input can them leverage a common knowledge base widely across the team and locally with functional specialists.
-local cross-functional solving vs. homogenous connections
Project delay parameters: adaptations(ad hoc measures, documentation), infrastructure incompatibility, individual function/performance, time zone differences, media choice usage
Managerial processes: regular pace of contact, relationship building, avoiding micro management (ed: freedom & responsibility for project members), uncertainty reduction (comprehensive plans, multiple linkages).
Control processes: formalized way of working, IS support (groupware), task clarity and relationships (ed: trust?),
!development and implementation methodologies
!! pg 546
!! Underestimation
!! ex-ante coordination and control mechanisms
!! task urgency and criticality (adaptation patterns STw: conflict resolution)
Team Learning & Shared Cognition
Clutterbuck: Task, Learning & Behaviour
Van Fenema
David Clutterbuck puts forward some suggestions on how to manage team learning. A central proposition in his work is that individuals benefit more from learning within a team than from learning as an individual. The cycle of acquiring, distributing and application of knowledge is much more effective within a team that takes “active responsibility for developing themselves and each other”(EBF). Further more, the organisation benefits from better alignment of business goals with personal and team objectives due to a multi-perspective by the team on their own progress in relationship to the organisation. The psychological contract(Clutterbuck, 2000) between the individual and the organisation fulfils the mutual expectation of adding value to each other while they are in association.
Clutterbuck first puts forward than the role of the team leader changes significantly in a team where an effort is made to ensure learning within a team. The team leader is no longer to continually fulfil the role of coach though motivational and behavioural examples, but to create a developmental environment for the team. The team is then to work from self- /intra-team coaching to make sure all team members maximises the learning potential from stretching assignments. Delegating tasks among each other and creating skill overlap promotescollegial support and the opportunity to learn from growth and development of a supportive peer network as well as developing personal confidence and capability.
Having a matching team leader is the requirement for successful use of the team learning plan. This plan is to link together the organisations realistic demand of the team in terms of broad competency requirements through an iterative definition process. These requirements are matched to individual learning and availability with the group. Finally the plan’s viability needs to be checked against the team’s available resources.
The awareness of necessary team learning roles will be dealt with later on when discussing team roles in general.
Boundaries (@Tippet & Elrod)
task and membership stability or level of change or novelty. The time span, crisis occurrence, team maturity, coalescence, interaction routines, self evaluation and reflection are factors contributing to the teams learning potential.
How teams learn?
Team Leader
Team Learning Plan
Team Learning Roles
Despite extensive studies on team types, team behaviours and especially team task focus little has been published on managing team learning (Clutterbuck). By revisiting the boundaries as put forward by Tippet & Elrod, the learning organization comprises learning individuals and learning teams that build the organisation’s learning capacity.
Clutterbuck views teams and their learning potential by defining task and membership stability or level of change or novelty. The time span, crisis occurrence, team maturity, coalescence, interaction routines, self evaluation and reflection are factors contributing to the teams learning potential.
To manage the team learning, rethinking the role of team leader is stated to be the first aspect of “harnessing the instinctive developmental behaviours of the best of teams”.
Establishing a team-learning plan is the second step and provides a strategic perspective to managing team learning. In an iterative process the organisational demands of the team define broad definitions of required team competencies. These competencies are the individually tested to unearth availability within the team. Then the urgency and importance are linked to personal objectives, often defined within individual appraisal sessions, to establish a clear match to ensure motivation. The process cycle is complete when available resources and required learning and behavioural changes are committed to the team.