September - October 2001  

Teamwork on the Job — An Essential Ingredient to Success

by Ed Miller

By the time they leave college, chances are that most graduates will have participated on many different kinds of teams. They may have participated in athletic programs, music and drama productions, fraternity and club activities, or laboratory and academic project teams. Needless to say, engineering graduates know by the time they graduate that "teamwork" is what makes groups of people function.

Teams are found commonly in the workplace. They are used to make organizing, monitoring, directing, reporting, and delivering work easier to manage, and they increase the probability of success. Even when engineers work on a self-contained, one-person assignment, in most cases they still participate actively on a "bigger picture" work team.

The most immediate team on which we participate is usually our department group — our "home" in the organization. We might also be part of a project team, which includes colleagues who are doing work that is related by either discipline or by final product. It's not unusual for large projects to rely on the efforts of several teams, with each one having between a half-dozen and almost two dozen team members. Coordinating the efforts of all of these team players and having team members all perform effectively on the team are key to overall success.

Coordination and Efficiency Translate to Successful Teamwork

The two aspects of teamwork specifically noted in the definition of teamwork are coordination and efficiency. Presumably, the latter comes from the former; that is, efficiency is an expected outcome of coordination of effort. So it's relevant to consider how you can achieve coordination.

Successful coordination requires that each team member understands:

• Who is responsible for what parts of the project
• What the tangible deliverables are
• How the work is progressing with respect to the set schedule

It is the responsibility of the team leader to ensure that all team members know these things. The team leader works in collaboration with the rest of the team, develops project assignments, and provides a detailed description of the specific deliverables as well as the timeline for when they are due.

Communication — The Essential Component

Aside from actual progress made on the team's project, communication is probably the most essential component of teamwork. Project leaders must first communicate the project details, schedules, and expectations to all team members. They can do this in a number of ways.

Often times, groups hold weekly, biweekly or other appropriately scheduled project meetings. Experience shows that meetings at which team members are expected to describe their progress, with slightly longer presentations given by one or two members on a rotating basis, can work very well. This meeting style gives team members opportunities to ask questions, make suggestions, or efficiently offer useful information to the team.

Team members can also provide input for monthly written progress reports, summarizing project status as it relates to timelines, expectations and other related criteria. Finally, informal communication keeps team members connected.

Regardless of how team members communicate, teams that do not communicate frequently but exist only on an organization chart are not really teams. As such, they will not enjoy collective efficiency or coordination of effort.

Ed Miller is retired from Los Alamos National Labs. He currently serves as an associate editor of IEEE Potentials and is an IEEE Fellow.