Case Study

Team Management

There are many guidelines for how to establish, build and manage teams in organisations and almost a belief that teams are 'it' - the best and only way tooperate.However, there is an emerging literature that suggests that teams are not always the answer or that somepeople simply cannotwork inteams.

Arnold provides a succinct overview of ten waysworkplace teamwork shouldnotbeused.From the 'one person is the hero'scenario to those 'out to achieve their own agenda'or 'to diffuse blame' the examples she cites focus on one simple rule - use teams where they makesense!

In their book X-teams, Ancona and Bresman argue that most talk about teams is focused on the internal dynamicsof teams with concern for achieving camaraderie, trust and internal working processes.While this is beneficial, it means that we often fail to give enough consideration to how the team must operateand connect with outsiders.

As Ancona and Bresman argue, we tend to have this limiting mindset when establishing and managing teams. As a result, teams become inwardly focused and team members miss seeing the bigger picture of what is required to be successful. The authors give an illustration of a team developing a new version of a software product. The team was so focused on its goals of continuous improvement and meeting deadlines that it chose to ignore information given by managers about possible improvements to the product (these improvements were customer suggestions). In the end, due to this inward focus, the team went into a downward spiral and failed.

Successful X-teams have three features: (1) external activity, (2) extreme execution and (3) flexible phases.External activityincludes seeking out information about technology, the market and the com petition, as well as finding ways to work with others outside the team. Team members also need to make sure they understand what direction management is moving in and what other teams are doing; that is,they have effective communication with other people outside the team. Extreme execution refers to the development and use of effective internal processes to achieve work that must be coordinated with the external activity. Finally, X-teams are also adaptable and prepared to shift their activities over the team's lifetime. For example,they incorporate flexible phases,such as exploration , exploitation and exportation, in developing new products or services.Thus,the teamwork involves exploration of customer needs - for example, top management expectations - and exploitation of that learning to develop new products, and working with outsiders to transfer their new product, services or ideas to others.X-teams are also built on the principles of having extensive tiesto useful outsiders, expandable tiersto structure themselves to do the work, and exchangeable membershipto accommodate rotating leadershipand the coming and leaving of team members over time (team members might come or leave through natural growth and attrition, or to fulfil taskrequirements).

The work of Ancona and Bresman points to the idea that teams collectively have a mutual responsibility for tasks, which goes beyond developing healthy internal team dynamics. Regardless of how much trust and camaraderie exist in a team, the team will not be successful unless it can flexibly and fully engage with relevant outsiders to achieve itspurposes.

Q3. What do you think has created the nature of the cohesiveness demonstrated in the software product development team and the problems this caused in terms of the team's long-termeffectiveness?

Q4 What would you do to turn around the problems identified in the software product developmentteam?