Team roles Working in teams

174 Chapter 7 n Controlling your project team member’s contribution while others may require a more reflective review presented as an essay or a report. Examiners may also be interested in a reflective account of how the team worked together. For example, did you have a single team leader, how did the team communicate, how was work allocated, how was the team managed, what was your role and was this an appropriate use of your skills, what would you do differently next time, etc.? Ideally, if the team has worked well together and everyone has done their fair share, each student will claim an equal share of the marks and the marks will be allocated evenly. However, when discrepancies appear the examiners must decide on a means of reaching a compromise. If the students are claiming similar contributions but not exactly the same, a simple averaging of the claims may be fair. Examiners may adjust marks if at least two members corroborate a different percentage split. If the claims are wildly different for example, one team member claims he did 80 of the work while the other team members think he did only 30 the examiners may well interview the team individually andor as a team to determine a compromise or identify why such discrepancies have arisen. It is at times like these that documentary evidence is impor- tant – so make sure you minute your meetings. The following are some tips that should help you if you are asked to produce an appraisal of your team’s performance as a team and from an individual perspective: n Be honest. If you write an honest account of your contribution to the team and the team performance it will be accurate and should be supported by your other team members. n Try to come to an agreement as a team before you hand in your summative reports – so you are agreed on who contributed what to the project. n Be willing to fight your corner if you feel you have been unfairly treated. n Ensure you have documentary evidence to back up your claims – minutes of team meetings, for example. n Make sure that all meetings are fully documented and people ‘sign up’ to work commitments. Not only does this provide people with a ‘contract’ which they feel obliged to fulfil but, also, if things go wrong, arguments won’t start over claims that ‘X said they would do this’ and ‘Y promised that’. These ideas should help you to deal with members of the team who don’t seem to pull their weight. n Try to monitor individual contributions as the project is progressing rather than at the end. At an interim meeting you could ask all team members to complete a contribu- tion sheet – indicating what they feel each member of the team is contributing to the project for example, for a team of five, an equal contribution would be 20 each. If there are discrepancies at this stage for example, X feels she is doing the bulk of the work, while everyone else thinks work is split evenly, try to sort them out sooner rather than later. Get people to explain their reasoning as to why contributions appear to differ you may find out, for example, that someone is doing a lot more work than you thought or reassign tasks to try and even up the workloads.

7.5.7 Systems to support team work

There are a number of online systems available that can help your team perform more effectively. These systems include those that allow you to share documents, those that allow you to manage the team arranging meetings, assigning work, etc., configuration 7.5 Working in teams 175 management systems that allow you to control changes to a system that several people are working on simultaneously and discussion forums. Configuration management was covered in Section 6.9. In this section we will look at tools to support group collabora- tion in other ways. Example of such tools include: n Wikis. A wiki is a web site that users can access and contribute to – a type of interac- tive database of information like Wikipedia. Your team might want to establish one of these sites as a means of sharing information and ideas. For more information on Wikis see http:www.wikimatrix.org a site for comparing Wikis and Wikipedia at http:www.wikipedia.org – the largest online Wiki. n Blogs. A blog is an online forum in which users post their ideas, thoughts, diary details, etc. You can set up a blog for your group and use it as a means of communication as well as recording conversations, comments, etc. For more information on blogs, see http:www.weblogmatrix.org , which compares a number of blogging sites. n Project management systems. These are online systems that allow you to manage your project and support the team. An example of such a tool is http:www. projectplace.com , which provides facilities for managing documents, people com- municating assigning tasks, etc., meetings, the project as a whole tracking progress and planning.

7.5.8 Teamwork tips

n Have a single project managerteam leader. It is often tempting in group work to have a rather democratic, leader-less structure. However, somebody does need to be in charge of your project’s management and coordinate the effort of everybody involved, keep a strategic view on your project’s progress and make ‘unpopular’ decisions. If the group has two or three members who would like to lead the team, perhaps this could be achieved on a rotational basis. This could be managed by rotating the team leader based on each team member’s technical contribution and effort which will vary during the course of the project. Alternatively, as mentioned earlier, the team leader’s role could be divided amongst those wishing to lead the group, but this is less satisfactory. n Maintaining everyone’s interest and motivation throughout the course of a large project can be difficult. For example, systems analysts would be busier at the earlier stages of a project than the end when, perhaps, programmers become overburdened. To overcome these problems try to plan into your project’s schedule team responsi- bilities as well as technical activities. For example, the systems analyst might take over the group’s secretariallibrary activities as the project progresses; a programmer may relinquish the leader’s role; etc. n In line with the points made above, it is important to ensure that people aren’t over- burdened with technical and team roles. It can take a lot of time to manage a group alongside other activities. You should ensure that team roles are accounted for when work is assigned to each member of your group. For example, a good team coordi- nator, who can motivate and coordinate everyone’s contributions, may be assigned this task as their only role. n Maintain good communication between all team members. Make sure that a contact sheet for every team member is produced at the project’s start with everybody’s home 176 Chapter 7 n Controlling your project address, telephone numbers and email address. Hold frequent short meetings, not long infrequent ones. Try to make full use of all the communication tools available to you. These can include facilities such as electronic diaries to plan meetings, email to support team communication, texting, etc. Email can also be used to transfer documents and files between team members as attachments. Also try to set up shared directories on your institution’s computer servers so that all team members have access to the latest project files but ensure some form of configuration management is in place. n Try to create a team spirit. Create an identity with a team name and try to arrange some informal, social meetings as well as your formal ones n Try to maintain a single person to act as a liaison with external bodies such as your client, technical support staff, supervisor etc. Even if two or three of you attend client meetings it should be made clear who the contact person is within the group. This ensures that a consistent message is presented to external bodies and contradic- tions are avoided. It also avoids contradictory information passing into your group from two or three team members who may have approached the client on different occasions and received contradictory requests. n Split the report writingdocumentation into appropriate sections and assign these according to each team member’s abilities and what they have done. Make sure that team members know when they have to provide their particular contribution by; allow time for collating all the contributions; confirm an ‘in-house’ style that the team should adhere to for all documents produced. Get the team’s librariansecretary to coordinate this. n Consider implementing some kind of configuration management process and system such as that discussed in Section 6.9 to ensure, if several members of the team are working on different parts of a software system simultaneously, that the components integrate together seamlessly and version control is supported. n Sometimes a team is dominated by one or more of its members who always seem to want to say something, no matter how irrelevant, about everything during discussions monopolisers. Similarly, some members of the team may always seem reluctant to say anything or contribute to discussions introverts. Divert attention from monopolisers by requesting ideas from other team members. Ask each member of the team to take a turn at providing a contribution thereby including introverts and limiting monopolisers. Split the team into smaller working parties so that the influence of monopolisers is diminished. •

7.6 Summary

n All projects have five elements that require managing to some extent as the project progresses: time, cost, quality, scope and resources. These elements need to be bal- anced against one another so that you achieve your project’s aims and objectives. n Of these five elements, cost is something over which you probably have little concern or control. Quality and scope are the two elements you have most responsibility for and control over. Resources are those that are available to accomplish your project – you, your supervisor, and your project team. The time you are allocated to complete