What is a supervisor?
170 Chapter 7
n Controlling your project
Thought oriented roles
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Plant – Creative, imaginative, can solve difficult problems. Does not like criticism; often introverted. Often so preoccupied with problems that she doesn’t communi-
cate effectively.
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Monitor evaluator – Sees all options and maintains a strategic view of the project. Tends to be quite shrewd and objective in decision-making. Because of focus on
strategic issues, can appear quite detached from the day-to-day operations of the project and does not really inspire others.
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Specialist – Narrow specialism and viewpoint but dedicated. While essential to certain parts of the project, contribution can be limited. Often uses a lot of jargon in
communications.
Chances are that you will not be working in a team with this number of members. However, individuals within your team may well possess two or three of Belbin’s skill
traits, giving your group a reasonable skills balance. Having a good cross-section of team skills within your group is, however, no guarantee of project success. Having said
this, the more of these skills that are present within your group, the higher the chances are that the team will succeed. Individuals will work together well and the team will not
suffer from clashes between the egos of several like-minded people.
These skill traits should be kept in mind when team roles are assigned. Three team roles, which are common to all project teams, irrespective of the project, include:
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Team leader – chairperson, coordinator. Responsible for time-tabling the work, assigning
it, chasing team members’ progress, chairing meetings, making difficult decisions, etc.
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Librariansecretary – minutes meetings, coordinates paperwork and all literature.
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Team contact communications officer – liaises with external bodies – the client,
supervisor, etc. When assigning these roles, you might, for example, elect your team leader as the person
possessing the skills of a coordinator. A resource investigator would perhaps be a good person to assign as your team contact, and the team’s librariansecretary may be best assigned to a
completer-finisher. You might also assign primary and secondary roles to each member of the
team. For example, someone may have the primary role of librariansecretary and be supported by another team member who has this as their secondary role. Thus each team
member is responsible for one aspect of the project, supported by one other team member, and each team member is supporting, in a secondary role, someone else.
Sometimes you may find that no one naturally fits into any of these roles or you may find that no one is willing to take on a particular role. In these cases the role might have
to be divided so that different people are responsible for it, or that different people take on the role at different stages of the project. For example, team leadership could be
split into coordinating team contributions, chairing meetings, planning, etc. This is a compromise and not an ideal solution as projects should ideally have a single leader.
Technical skills are particularly important within computing projects. Depending on the nature of your course, and the type of project you are undertaking, you will need
team members with some of the following technical abilities:
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Programming – high level, low level, 4GLs, visual programming, etc.
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Databases – analysis, design, development
7.5 Working in teams 171
Strengths Weaknesses
Strong leader Poor relating to people I don’t know
Technically sound Writing skills poor
Good programmer
Opportunities Threats
Project is a chance to Field trip clashes with
improve my systems project presentation
analyse skills
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Systems analysis
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Systems design
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Information systems
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Human computer interaction
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Networking
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Computer systems architecture
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Graphics
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Mathematics including statistical analyses, etc. O’Sullivan et al. 1996 suggest using a SWOT analysis to identify team responsibilities.
A SWOT analysis identifies everyone’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. For example, your own personal SWOT analysis might look something like this:
Not only must your team be well balanced with respect to technical skills and the team skills identified earlier, but your team must also link well. In other words, there
must be good communication between team members in order for the project to succeed. This boils down to people’s ability to get on with one another and is the main
benefit of being in a group with your friends.