The Whole is the Sum of the Parts

As company employees, you are all players on the same company team. But companies are generally comprised of smaller departmental teams — executive, research & development, production, marketing, sales, etc. — which are often subdivided even further into distinct, specialized subteams, such as technical, operations, support, communications, financial, contracts and legal.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

When relying on multiple teams to complete a project, how can companies ensure that milestones will be met and tasks accomplished? Program or project managers have ultimate responsibility for seeing a project through to completion, but to do so requires coordinating smooth interaction between individual teams and team members. 

Projects are most successful when each team understands what the other teams are doing — and how they are getting it done. In 1999, former President and Vice Chairman of Chrysler Corporation Robert Lutz said in an interview with Today's Engineer (Vol.2, Num.1): "Teams are superb because they permit instant communication and sharing of information at the level where the sharing of information is necessary...The bad part about teams is that, unless they are strongly led, they won't move off the dime."

Your Team Toolbox

Throughout a project cycle, it is important for teams to:

• Prioritize and Compromise — Within the confines of the overall project plan, team leaders must develop plans that are specific to their teams' respective task areas. Under the direction of the project manager, the team leaders should create detailed plans that include all time, resources, staff and other requirements for mapping their "route to the ultimate goal." This task may be conducted autonomously, but once plans are outlined, team leaders must share their plans with each other and find compromises when priorities, methods or time lines conflict.

• Educate and Train — Each team's particular function is critical to project success. Therefore, teams should rely on each other as resources. Team members should learn their teammates’ strengths and weaknesses — and recognize their own — and use the collective strengths of all to make the project effort more efficient.
  

• Communicate — While working separately toward a common goal, sound and timely communication between teams is vital. Find a common language that everyone can understand and use, and encourage open dialogue. Doing so will help reduce conflict and misunderstanding. Problems will be identified and resolved early, individual teams will reach milestones more efficiently, and everyone will accomplish the common project goal on or ahead of schedule.