Introduction Working in teams

7.5 Working in teams 173 Sam Chris Design 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Requirements 13 Testing Person Time weeks 1st report Field trip Final Report Coding Figure 7.4 A resource allocation histogram of a simple development project any problems can perhaps be dealt with sooner rather than later. Some points you should consider when arranging your team meetings include: n Location. Avoid public areas for the meeting such as a café or bar. Try to find some- where more professional to meet where you will not be disturbed and can access use- ful materials such as white boards, flip charts, wireless internet connection, etc. n Agenda. Your meetings should have a clear agenda. You should discuss issues such as progress since the previous meeting and against the project plan, individual contributions, problems and solutions, other meetings contacts with clients, supervisor, etc., changes to the project plan, reassignment of tasks, target setting for the next meeting. n Chair. Try to ensure you have someone in charge of the meeting who can control the discussions and make sure someone is also taking notes and minuting the meeting.

7.5.5 Resource allocation histograms

In order to identify which members of your team are working on which tasks at partic- ular times, you could use a resource allocation histogram RAH. RAHs are used by project managers to balance out work commitments amongst staff and resources and show, quite clearly, which resources are working on which tasks at any given time. A RAH is usually put together during the project’s planning stage and is a useful tool for project control. An example of a RAH is shown in Figure 7.4 – in this case, showing two people working on a software development project over a period of 13 weeks. You can see from this figure that it is quite easy to determine who is working on which task at any particular time. The RAH can easily be extended to several team members by adding extra rows and can include non-project work too for example, holidays, field trips, etc..

7.5.6 Group work reports and the allocation of marks

Quite often, in addition to completing a group project, institutions expect individual students to reflect on their experience of teamwork and report on the conduct of other members of the group. Examiners may also want to know how to distribute marks amongst the team members – should everyone be given an equal share or have some members con- tributed more than others? The requirements for such reports will vary from one depart- ment to the next – some requiring little more than an honest percentage breakdown of each 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