Team Rules

Team Deliverable #1

Creating an Initial Team Structure: Rules, Decisions, & Objectives

The deliverable for this assignment is a document that describes how the team wishes to operate and be structured. The document should be divided into three sections: 1) rules: expectations for behavior of team members; 2) decision making: how it will be decided what the team will do, who will do it, and how it will be done; 3) your primary team objectives for the semester.

Section 1: What are the behaviors you expect of yourselves and one another? What are the things that team members should do, what are the things that they should not do, and what are the most important of these rules? Topics would typically include at least the following: communication, meetings and meeting preparation, deliverables, and team harmony.

Section 2: How do you wish to decide things when there is disagreement? by talking to consensus, by vote, by authority of the person responsible—some combination of these?

Section 3: What are your team’s overarching goals—for the team as a whole, and for individuals?

To do this exercise, we recommend that you try using what is called the “Delphi Technique” for surfacing ideas. It is accomplished in three segments. First, all individuals, working by themselves, write down their initial ideas on the three components and send them to a coordinator member of the team. The coordinator assembles the ideas into one document (removing redundant ideas and combining where needed). The coordinator emails back this complied set of answers, and team members send a revised solution back to the coordinator after reading others’ thoughts. Finally, at a face-to-face team meeting, the second set of solutions are discussed and the team devises its final agreement. Clearly, to complete this quickly, team members have only a day or two to complete steps one and two. The team meeting should be somewhat brief because everyone has seen all others’ ideas coming in.

Here is a description of the technique:

Delphi Technique: remote, then face-to-face

1. each person individually and independently write ideas/ solutions

2. a coordinator compiles a summary overview, and sends out to all

3. second round of individual solutions are written to coordinator

4. coordinator compiles to summary

5. face-to-face, team discussion of plusses minus of each

6. team decides (or leader chooses)

Submitting the Assignment

Email (PDF format) to your your faculty mentor. This assignment is not uploaded to Canvas.