| The Team Charter Exercise is a tool that teams use to help them focus on what they need to do and how they need to do it. |
Assignment Guidelines
Use gDocs to collaborate with your teammates on a 2-to 4-page charter for your team. Your audience for this text is other members of team, committee, or startup.
Preliminaries Before the Kickoff Meeting
- Schedule the kickoff meeting.
- Before the meeting, carefully review your classmates’ pitches.
- Review the tasks associated with the Consultancy Simulation.
Kickoff Meeting Agenda
- Discuss your expectations (and concerns) about managing this project
- Discuss the problem definitions and pitches.
- Meet together as a team
As soon as your team members have submitted their initial project proposals, your team needs to develop a team charter.
When a group first forms there is minimal trust, no shared goals, no history of past performance, and roles are unclear. Despite this lack of clarity, members are usually eager to jump into the task at hand. Jumping in without a roadmap, however, is recipe for failure.
The single most critical success factor in high-performing teams is having a shared understanding of why a team exists and what it is trying to accomplish. Creating a team charter is the first step in developing a shared understanding and ensuring that everyone is on the same page from the start.
How to write a team charter:
Meet together as a team.
- At your first meeting discuss your expectations (and concerns) about managing this project.
- Discuss and consider what has worked well and poorly in previous team/group projects you have been involved in.
REQUIRED SECTIONS of your charter
- Team name with explanation why the name was ch≠≠osen — have fun with the names, but keep it professional and respectful. This name will be on the final manual you would give to the client/your boss/etc.
- Goals and Values
- Potential Obstacles: Consider personal, professional, educational, other
- Ground Rules/Expectations of all team members — REMEMBER, you will be giving a team/peer grade to each member of your group for how well they worked as part of your team. Create the expectations now so no one is surprised at the end of this project.
- Strengths and Weaknesses: individual and/or overall team
- Operation procedures for team meetings (when will you meet, where, how often?), team communication (best way, what happens if someone doesn’t respond quickly or at all?), conflict within your team, (not) meeting deadlines, etc.
- Team roles/positions for each team member (see next page). Due to team sizes, these roles may need to be adjusted.
Team Roles
Project Manager
Coordinate information, maintain records (including meeting notes), identify deadlines, and keep on top of other team members’ work to ensure deadlines are being met and completed.
Responsibilities
Oversee team communications, meetings (agendas and notes) and deadlines. Reports problems and project status updates to the Project Manager’s boss (the Group Project Manager).
Deliverables
- Create meeting agendas and records meeting minutes during team meetings
- Record workflow and process of team assignment completion in necessary program/format
Analyst & User Research
Ensure requirements of Consulting Simulation are met by research & document creation. Responsible for implementing various research methodologies to help gain understanding of user needs and behaviors.
Responsibilities
- Be aware of various components of the Consulting Simulation. Understand what is required for assignment.
- Ensure each component is being addressed by someone within the team. Provide support and expert knowledge for all team members as manual components are written to ensure reader-centric writing is occurring and needs of the non-specialist reader are being met
Deliverables
- Conduct and share research on the selected non-specialist user and “problem” that needs to be addressed
- Why is it a problem?
- How did it become a problem?
- What is at stake if the problem isn’t addressed/fixed? Etc.)
- Provide the research/background information necessary for the final Recommendation Report.
Interface Analyst & User Research
Focused on creating consistent and predictable layouts. Ensure all deliverables meet requirements and adhere to branding of the group. Focus on aesthetics of user interface and any related materials by strategically implementing CRAAP HATS and images.
Responsibilities
Streamline all deliverables to ensure consistency in branding and formatting. Communicate and collaborate effectively with team members Ensure needs of non-specialist reader is being met through layout and design to ensure ease of locating and understanding information presented is concise and effective.
Deliverables
- Create a technical document template and format all team documentation accordingly
- Compile and prepare all team documentation (deliverables created and written by all members of team) into a well-organized, easy-to-navigate final manual. Responsible for adherence to business writing formats/layouts, proper CRAAP integration, etc.
Deliverables Specialist
Final gatekeeper of information before submitted. Attention to detail required to ensure all needs and expectations of your reader are met and no simple mistakes (formatting, spelling, etc.) occur. Submit all documents on time.
Responsibilities
- Organize team’s documentation/ deliverables.
- Store all documentation in a central location for team
- Submit final deliverables of ALL positions to instructor in proper format and by stated deadlines through Canvas.
Student Learning Outcomes
- help students develop the interpersonal competencies prized by employers
- help team members define the roles and responsibilities necessary to successfully complete the Consultancy Simulation
- help students develop project-management competencies, particularly the ability to structure productive teamwork by defining roles and responsibilities
- provide students with some declarative knowledge about collaboration
- prepare students to have a vocabulary and a sense of the scholarly conversation around the topic of collaboration
Readings
The following readings will help you navigate this project.
Co-authorship
Conflict Resolution
Critique
Leadership
Peer Review
Teamwork
Tools for Project Management
