Working in Teams

Questions:
1. What is a project team?
2. List advantages and disadvantages of working in teams as outlined in the textbook and through your personal experience.

Project Teams are specific groups formed to plan and execute projects. Project teams shoudl be assigned early, kept intact, and located near the work, of applicable, in contigous spaces. The project team consists of those who work on the project and usually report to a project manager. Generally, each member is assigned to a team because he or she is possesses a certain skill that is essential to the complection of the project. for instance, a software project team would require a software desginer, several programmers, possibly a graphic artist, a tester (or quality assurance specialist), and a project manager.

There are many advantages and disadvantages when working in teams:

Advantages:

• Promotes innovation and creativity.
• Improves the quality of decision making.
• Gains memebers' commitment to tasks.
• Exerts control or disipline on members.
• Promotes interaction among members that satisfies the affiliation needs of individuals.
• Provides more information to all involved through the contribution of individuals.

Disadvatages:

• Requires interaction that may result in too much time off-task.
• Success depends on all team members being responsable
• Results in time lostes because of numerous meetings.
• Conflicts may result from differences in personality or leadership style.