A team has been pulled together from various parts of a large service organization to work on a new process improvement project that is needed to improve how the company manages and supports its client base. The team lead on this project is Sandra from the Chicago office who has 15 years experience as a project manager/team lead managing process improvement projects.

The other members of the team include:

Peter: 10 years experience on various types of projects, expertise in scheduling and budget control (office location: San Diego)

Sarah: 5 years experience as an individual contributor on projects, strong programming background, some experience developing databases (office location: Chicago)

Mohammed: 8 years experience working on various projects, expertise in earned value management, stakeholder analysis and problem solving (office location: New York)

Donna: 2 years experience as an individual contributor on projects (office location: New York)

Ameya: 7 years experience on process improvement projects, background in developing databases, expertise in earned value management (office location: San Diego)

Sandra has worked on projects with Sarah and Mohammed, but has never worked with the others. Donna has worked with Mohammed. No one else has worked with other members of this team. Sandra has been given a very tight deadline to get this project completed.

Sandra has decided that it would be best if the team met face-to-face initially, even though they will be working virtually for the project. She has arranged a meeting at the New York office (company headquarters) for the entire team. They will spend 2 days getting introduced to each other and learning about the project.

Support your answer in the light of Team Development and how you make the performance increase of your team ?