Ethiopian TVET-System

Rift Valley University Batu Campus

IT DEPARTMENT
LEVEL II
Unit of Competence: Working in Team Environment

Module Title: Working in Team Environment

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 LO1: Describe and Identify Team Role and Responsibility in a Team.
Clarify Roles

Knowing everyone’s role and being familiar with the responsibility of those roles create efficiency and
flexibility. Ideas for clarifying roles on the team include:

Review team members’ roles frequently.

Relate team member expectations to the team’s overall purpose.

Clarify responsibilities when action planning.

Learn what others do on the team.

Setting aside time to really evaluate what you do and how that impacts (or not) the company you work for
is important to understanding the value you and your role have with that organization.

After fully understanding your current role, value within your company, and its possible benefits and
setbacks for your future, it’s time to take action. So many people become complacent in their careers and
on the job.

Relationship and Responsibility

Being a mutually evolving process, a relationship requires team members to be dependent on each other.
Every individual should develop a level of trust for each other in order to be reliable for each other.

In order to build trust, the team can hold trust-building talks during meetings every now and then. Self-
disclosure is a good strategy for establishing trust with each other. Learning how to open and share a little
about you to your teammates will give them a chance to know you as a person.

Each individual in a team has talents and abilities that can contribute to a solid work relationship which is
needed to be productive in the job. As a team, members have to identify who excel in technical expertise,
who are keen in problem-solving and decision-making, and who are adept in active listening, giving good
feedback, and conflict resolution.

Identifying these skills helps a team perform effectively. This is otherwise known as team synergy
through a coordinated effort of performing these abilities. Diversities even in skills and talents are
common. But sharing these skills for the benefit of the team can build a solid work relationship among the
individuals.

Relationship with a Team

Typically, in a work setting, every working individual belongs to a team where a group of members work
together with similar functions and work description, though not necessarily similar in interests.

Also, individuals in a team generate a collaborative effort to achieve common goals, and may need to give
up individual autonomy in order to attain those goals. The organization as a whole can make up a team
and this component is by far the largest to be called as such.

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When teams are formed, it is normal for people to take different roles, according to their position, ability
or character type. Formal roles are the external, defined positions that are associated with given
responsibilities and are usually allocated according to the position or ability of each person.

Individuals in a team will also tend to adopt informal roles that depend more on their character than on
any specific knowledge or position. Recognizing these behaviors can be very useful when helping the
team to work together.

Formal Roles

In order for a team to work in an organized way towards their objectives, several formal roles are often
allocated or decided on within the group. Although the leader is the most common role, other positions of
specific responsibility can help give focus to specific activities and ensure formal tasks are completed.

Leader

The style of the group leader sets the style of how the group will operate. This style should be more
participative than directive, as improvement groups often operate on a voluntary basis or where the work
is outside their normal work scope. There also may be no official reporting line to the leader, who may be
a peer or from another area.

A key objective of the leader is to motivate the rest of the team into having a strong focus on succeeding
in their objectives. An active and effective way to achieve this is by working within the team rather than
directing it from above. An important factor is that the leader should be respected by the team members,
who will be willing to work together with him or her. The leader should also be clearly enthusiastic about
solving the problem by using appropriate tools, rather than the less structured 'brainstorm and implement'
sessions that often occur.

The leader should also have a good understanding of the improvement process being used and should be
able to work closely with the facilitator.

Recorder

The information gathered, minutes of meetings, output from tool use and communications inside and
outside the team forms the 'group memory' of the team. If this is not recorded and organized, it can result
in the team itself becoming disorganized.

The role of the recorder (or scribe or librarian) is thus to record and gather all the data and present it in a
format which the team can easily understand and reference. The key skills for the recorder are a clear and
concise writing style and an ability to organize information for easy access.

Analyst

Measurements made during the project are seldom directly interpretable, and must be translated into an
understandable format from which decision points may be identified. The analyst's key focus is on the
measurement and interpretation of data to enable these decisions to be made.

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The exact skills of the analyst will vary with the type of project, for example where detailed numerical
measures are being made, a mathematical ability may be needed. Other projects may need an
understanding of psychology, for example where the measurement is of people's opinions.

Expert

Experts in the team have specialized knowledge, for example about technical areas or key processes, and
act as advisors and authorities in their field of expertise. It is important in an improvement team to either
have appropriate expertise within the team or to have it readily available.

A chicken and egg situation can occur, where an expert is required to identify a problem, but the
appropriate expert cannot be identified until the problem is known. This can result in the problem being
circled, but not approached. The effect of this on the team is that experts may come and go, or may stay
and become inappropriate people to have on the team.

Facilitator

The facilitator is not an actual team member, but is closely connected with the team, and especially with
the team leader. This person is an expert in team dynamics and in the improvement process, and thus acts
as an advisor and teacher. The facilitator never owns the problem, but does have a strong interest in the
success of the group.

An effective way of allowing the facilitator to lead the team in specific activities, yet without
undermining the leader's role, is for the leader to describe the objective and then to introduce the
facilitator as someone who will help them achieve this. The facilitator then takes over, with the clear
mandate of helping the group, whilst the leader sits with the group.

Informal roles

There are a number of models of interpersonal behavior in groups that identify specific roles that people
adopt, often unconsciously. It is important that these characters get on together, as subliminal conflict,
where people react emotionally to situations they do not consciously recognize, can be particularly
difficult to resolve.

In practice, behavioral style may vary along a spectrum between extremes. People may also act at
different positions along the spectra, depending on the situation. Nevertheless, individuals do tend
towards particular groups of behaviors and if these are recognized, a cohesive and effective mix may be
found in the group to enable its members to work well together. A typical set of behavioral styles are as
follows.

Social style: Self versus Group

It is natural to consider ones own opinions and feelings as important, and many people are largely self-
based in their thinking. However, people get on together by also thinking about others, and a person who
is more group-based will consciously aim to bring the group together as a harmonious whole.

People with strong self-image may tend towards a leadership role, but unless they also consider the
people in the team and the group as a whole, there is a danger of them becoming dictatorial, turning the

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focus away from the problem and onto personalities.

In effective groups, team members feel able to contribute their own ideas, but also take seriously the
thoughts of others and work towards an agreeable solution. It is an important role of the leader to bring
about this state of constructive cohesion.

Work style: Doer versus thinker

Some people have a practical work style, working to plan and taking pleasure in completing actions.
Others are more interested in the reasons behind the actions, and may challenge conventional approaches.

In teams, a balance of both styles is needed, to ensure thoughtful beginnings and solid completions to
team actions.

Thinking style: Divergent versus convergent

Divergent thinkers are good at brainstorming and coming up with unusual ideas. Convergent thinkers,
however, are good at judging and selecting items from a large set of possibilities.

Improvement teams often have an equal need for both styles of thinking, for example where divergent
thinking is used to find possible causes, then convergent thinking is used to select likely key causes to be
carried forward for further investigation.

Decision style: Intuition versus facts

In making decisions, a certain amount of personal judgment is required to be combined with the hard data
available to help reach a conclusion. An intuitive decision maker tends to rely more on feelings and
unidentified experience, whilst a factual decision-maker will seek to increase confidence in a decision by
seeking out and analyzing clear facts.

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LO2 Different Roles in Project management
It is very important to every project manager in fact to every person across industries to know about all
the possible roles in project management that exist in their respective organizational hierarchy. With the
role comes the responsibility. There are tons of responsibilities to execute, things to accomplish and be
accountable for. One should have fair knowledge and exposure to all the project manager roles in the
organization irrespective of their level and responsibilities.

 Given below are some of the very well-known roles with a brief description of each.

1. Executive Sponsor

This role has the highest interest in the project and its end result. Executive Sponsor has the responsibility
to monitor the budget and control the spending. Executive sponsor is the ultimate decision maker for the
project, its resources and outcome/deliverables.

2. Project Manager

Person in this role is primary responsible for the completion of the project as planned and agreed. He
might be given people management responsibility also. He is one who drives the team in required
direction.

3. People Manager

This role is to manage people in a project and see to that they are given with all that is required for them
to work smoothly. Delivery is not a responsibility of this role.

4. Delivery Manager

Primary responsibility of this role is to see that the project is delivered within agreed time lines and with
required quality. This role manages delivery team. Performs resource allocations and decides delivery
priorities.

5. Process Consultant

This role has the expert knowledge regarding the process that is followed internally. They are responsible
for educating the delivery team on the process and see to that they can adhere to internal process. They
have the responsibility of suggesting process improvements to increase the productivity and to maximize
the business value.

6. Client/Customer

Who has a business need and our delivered product or service will satisfy their business need. They are
the one who pays for our services.

7. Vendors

They provide additional products and services necessary for the project. Usually they will be contracted
for a period.

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8. Team Lead

This role is responsible for teams working and in most of the organizations he is the first level of manager
to who team reports into. Person in this role has the responsibility of coaching, coordination, problem
solving, information sharing, status reporting, and liaison to higher management or administration etc…,
depending on the type of organization and industry

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LO3. The three key drivers of increased project team participation
People are more willing to interact with the process and provide the valuable, accurate, and timely
information you need in order to make informed decisions and lead your team if you focus on these three
things:

1. Empowerment.

People want to be empowered. What is empowerment? Explained simply, empowerment is investing

Another aspect is making sure to include team members in your project planning processes. When team
members feel like they have a hand or a say in how things should be done, they automatically feel more
committed to seeing a project through to completion and to success. And any time you can employ a more
team-centric task assignment model within your team, you will enable your team members to contribute
to the establishment of benchmarks and timelines while also giving them a greater sense of responsibility.

2. Confidence.

Managers and executives are constantly consuming conversational information about projects so they can
get deeper insights into the real status of their projects. Project leaders who leverage solutions or tools
that facilitate free-form conversations around assignments can capture better information to help them
keep an accurate pulse on their projects and make more proactive decisions.

In a report commissioned by AtTask and conducted by Forrester Research, bottom-up operational

One good way to get this kind of transparency on your team is to incorporate social tools (or at least
emphasise and promote collaboration) into your project management processes. Social tools allow you to
capture conversational information at the source, which qualifies quantitative data and provides valuable
context that you wouldn't get otherwise.

When asked the question, 'What, in your opinion, would most improve data accuracy for knowledge
worker project/task time tracking respondents to Forrester's survey indicated that the leading measure for
improving data accuracy was 'capturing more qualitative information,' or in other words, more
conversational information.

Taking the more social, collaborative approach to IT project management establishes confidence in three
key ways: it will give you more confidence in your team members and vice versa, it will provide you with
project data you can trust for making important decisions and for reporting to your stakeholders, and it
will give your stakeholders and executives greater confidence in you and your team's ability to deliver.

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3. Recognition.

People take pride in their work. They care about what their managers and peers think of them and their
accomplishments. And although managers usually believe their team's accomplishments are being
adequately recognised, Forrester's research showed that many knowledge workers feel their managers are
out of touch with their contributions and value.

Over 40 per cent of knowledge workers reported lack of recognition by their managers and over 60 per
cent by executive leadership. Because of this, project teams that facilitate the recognition of individual
team member accomplishments and contributions foster an environment where team members are more
inclined to engage in their work.

Think of it this way; why are team members so often disengaged at work - refusing to use PPM software,
update spreadsheets accurately, or give responses more informative than '80 per cent done,' but they can
easily spend hours engaging on social platforms like Face book or Twitter? A key factor in that is
recognition. Why do people post Face book updates? Because they're looking for people to 'like' their
status or leave a comment acknowledging what they've said. The same principle can apply at work.

If you can find a way to get your project team involved in acknowledging each other's work and
accomplishments, especially if you can find that in a collaborative project management tool, you'll find
that your team's engagement will increase dramatically.

Looking at the project management process from a different and fresh perspective makes it possible to see
this paradigm shift, or this evolution of how individual members of project teams interact with the project
management process and how that can impact the quality of information executives and project leaders
use to make business decisions, as a positive thing for your IT department and your IT projects.

The power of empowerment, confidence, recognition, and collaboration within the structure of project
management will help you capture more relevant project information, get clearer visibility into your
business initiatives, and get your team members more engaged in your project management processes. It's
not a change that will likely happen over night, but it's a change that's worth it.

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