3.1.2 Knowledge check (with solutions)
3.1.3 Bonus Assignment - Team Contract
3.1.4 Team Contract Worksheet
Build team.
Overview
This learning module (Lesson 1 of Unit 3) is part of a course called Project Management Fundamentals and may either be completed individually as a stand-alone topic, or part of a trio of learning modules on internal management, or as part of the course.
Learning outcomes.
If you want to include a nice team building exercise, the Marshmallow Challenge provides a 20-minute exercise that engages students and causes them to rethink how teams work.
Here's a nice overview of the Marshmallow Challenge:
Teams offer a diversity of talent that makes the collective more powerful than the sum of its parts. In project management, teams can leverage member's strengths to achieve a common, shared goal.
Upon successful completion of this module, you'll be able to:
- Describe factors of high performing teams.
- Explain motivation theories.
- Demonstrate effective leadership (e.g., EQ).
What is the role of the team on a project? | 8 minute read
Porf. Christianson considers his Project Management Fundamentals textbook a work-in-progress (version 0.5). It is available at OER Commons as PDF download. He also provides a nice companion student workbook also available as a PDF download. For each chapter, the workbook provides a skeletal outline and knowledge checks (with answer keys). In many chapters, there are exercises and examples. It may be provided to students as a whole workbook or subsections may be provided with each chapter.
Read sections 1 and 2 of chapter 2 (Project Management Roles) of Christianson's Project Management Fundamentals text (PDF resource attached).
FYI: J. Scott Christianson is a professor at the University of Missouri and has an interesting website about technology (from AI to blockchain to crypto and everything in between).
What are the stages of team development? | 2 minute watch
How are we motivated? | 11 minutes watch
What makes a team high-performing? | 10 minute watch
Test your knowledge.
- Check all of the major characteristics of high performing teams.
- Defined roles and responsibilities
- Top talent
- Trust and respect
- Understanding of bigger picture
- Understanding of strengths and weaknesses
- Works hardest
- T/F: In addition to forming, storming, norming, and performing; some include adjourning as one of the stages of Tuckman's team stage model.
- True
- False
- Which of the following is NOT one of the pillars of Pink's "drive" theory of motivation*?
- Autonomy
- Mastery
- Purpose
- Psychological safety
*This has its roots in Deci & Ryan's self-determination theory.
BONUS: Putting what you learned in action.
If you are using the Project Management Fundamentals course over the course of a semester, it is often effective to engage students in teams on a term project. I have had students work with for-profit, governmental, and non-profit (i.e. NGO) organizations to plan events, create digital products, and also prepare strategic initiatives.
To support this idea of a project that allows students to apply what they've learned on an actual project, I have created a series of five transparent assignments:
- External Management - charter creation and stakeholder analysis
- Internal Management - team contract and RACI chart creation
- Scope Management - work breakdown structure and disctionary creation
- Schedule Management - Network analysis to identify critical path and Gantt chart creation
- Risk Management - Risk identification and analysis, creation of risk register
I have omitted the Cost Management competency group because often student projects do not have a budget, other than that of the students time.
Project Work 2 > Internal Management
For a project you and your team are currently working on, try creating a team contract and a RACI chart. These two project management tools will help you and your team be even more high-performing.
A set of transparent assignment instructions (resource attached) have been provided that includes the following:
- the purpose of the assignment,
- the knowledge and skills that will be developed by the assignment,
- the task involved,
- a checklist of what will need to be accomplished,
- a rubric of how to assess your work, and
- a sample of finished work.
Transparent assignments are a way for you to get clarity on expectations (see the "Unwritten Rules").
>>>Additional Resource: Westminster College has provided an excellent worksheet for developing team charters. It is also provided as a resource at the end of this section.