Discussing The Important Roles Of Teamwork Information Technology Essay

Working in a team means different individual people have to come together and function as one powerful unit. Team involves bringing the different types of skills and talents that each and every team member contributes and merging them into one successful effort. Sharing the responsibility is main part of being a team. This is the toughest part while working in a team, because the team members will have to share successes and losses as well. Even though they win or lose team has to remain a team. It is not about competition but it is one kind of support which you can give to the members of team. It helps in learning by experience.

Whether in the field of business or sporting activity, Solid teamwork can produce extraordinary outcome. But it is easier saying than actually doing it. Solid teamwork does not create by itself. There are many levels which are required to achieve together as a team. Each member of team must work faultlessly in order to make a solid team to develop any project.

Which factors are necessary to make a solid team?

There are list of factors that are very important to build an effective team. This will help to achieve targeted goals.

Communication skills:

Communication is quite important while working as a team. Open communication plays a big role when it comes to work as team. It allows team members to express their plans, ideas and feelings. It is also necessary for sharing their views which will help the team in different ways.

Effective communication is necessary in order to sort out some complex error while working as a team.

Allocating specific Roles:

It is require for team members to understand evidently that what their intention is, which role they have to play as a member of a particular team and also what are their responsibilities. It is also necessary to understand that what is not within their range of work and what are their goals and targets of a particular project. Team leader has to take responsibility to explain these things to his / her team members. Team members can help by achieving tasks as per the instructions given by the team leader according to their role and range of work of each member.

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Good Leadership:

One of the most important elements of solid teamwork is leadership. The leader of the team should have the ability to produce and maintain a positive working environment. It will help them to inspire and even encourage the members of a team to get more and more involved in creating a business like environment. A definition of good quality team leader is a leader who not only focuses on himself / herself but also on the direction and function of their team members and the team as well, team leader also need to make sure that other team members divide focus between the team to give their best. A team leader should be able increase the confidence level of his / her team members in order that they feel appreciated as well as valued members of a team.

Creating actions for Conflict Resolution:

Weather the team is good or bad, conflicts will unavoidable occur once in a while. The best option to contradict this situation is to use of prearranged methods to resolve this. Team members should have an approach to express their views without panic of causing transgression to other colleagues. Straight argument should be acceptable in an appropriate behavior, so the matters which have been confusing them can be cleared and solved. Instead of avoiding these situations, a practical approach to the situation is necessary and it will also help in resolving it quickly. Indeed, it is desirable for the leader of a particular team to actually discuss with the clients in clash and exercises the differences between them, but leader needs to make sure that he / she does not take any side and make sure to remain on goal. Ultimately, they can use conflicts as an opportunity to disclose core problems that possibly in subsistence in the team.

Setting a Good Example:

And as a final point, solid teamwork can barely come to pass when the leader of a team sets a good illustration, which can also be equal by the team members. With the aim to maintain the team motivated, dedicated and encouraging, the leader of a team himself / herself should have all these individuality and make it noticeable that what he / she is doing. In any case, the leader of a team is the person the team members expect for supervision, route and support, for this reason, any disapproval or distrust on his / her part is singled out by the team and which will be reflected in the teamwork. Even though you work individually, it is quite necessary to preserve a positive and encouraging attitude at all time.

A quote by Gerald Weinberg from the Psychology of Computer Programming

“The idea is that programmers must fight the natural tendency to treat their programs as part of themselves, and therefore to reject all criticism. Rather, they should do their best to treat their designs & implementations as objects independent of themselves, and to view criticism dispassionately on its merits. It’s a spiritual discipline that we all fall short of, but that’s worth attempting.

Clear performance expectations are a critical factor in teamwork success. Whether your goal is to develop a project team, your departmental team, or a sense of teamwork company-wide, clear performance expectations support teamwork success. Use clear performance expectations to help your employees develop accountable, productive, meaningful, participatory teamwork.

Working in a company has several aspects other than the abilities and experience of the person. One important aspect is teamwork. In most companies, it is necessary that the employee is able to work in a team, and maybe even handle a team work during the lean times.”[1]

Attributes of solid Teamwork

Teamwork is defined by Scarnati (2001, p. 5) “as a cooperative process that allows ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results”. Harris & Harris (1996) also explain that a team has a common goal or purpose where team members can develop effective, mutual relationships to achieve team goals. Teamwork replies upon individuals working together in a cooperative environment to achieve common team goals through sharing knowledge and skills. The literature consistently highlights that one of the essential elements of a team is its focus toward a common goal and a clear purpose (Fisher, Hunter, & Macrosson, 1997; Johnson & Johnson, 1995, 1999; Parker, 1990; Harris & Harris, 1996). Teams are an integral part of many organizations and should be incorporated as part of the delivery of tertiary units. Successful teamwork relies upon synergism existing between all team members creating an environment where they are all willing to contribute and participate in order to promote and nurture a positive, effective team environment. Team members must be flexible enough to adapt to cooperative working environments where goals are achieved through collaboration and social interdependence rather than individualized, competitive goals (Luca & Tarricone, 2001).

In software business the pressure to produce a software product that is relevant with the market needs and to stay competitive is a great challenge. The productivity of the organization is heavily founded on the effectiveness of their software development process. Several researchers agreed there are very significant relationships between having good software process and producing a quality product (Zahran, 1998; Ahern et al., 2004). Therefore a lot of software companies have attempted to improve their software process to gain these benefit. However in current dynamic business environment, improving the current software process only is not enough to ensure that the company stays competitive in the software industry. These are due to a lot of challenges and obstacles which need to be handled from many related aspects. At present software process needs to be maintained and evolved in order ensure it is always relevant with the current needs.

Software Process Improvement (SPI) has gained increasing importance in software engineering. According to Coleman (2006) the main aims of SPI are to understand the software process used in the organization and to guide the implementation of changes of that process in order to achieve specific goals such as to improve software development time, on budget and with the desired functionality. Several authors agreed that SPI has a close link between the quality of the development process and the quality of the product developed using the process (Zahran, 1998). In term of small companies, Ahern et al., (2004), found that small companies are more successful in producing a quality product if SPI fundamentals are observed closely.

Quality Matters

When it comes to the IT (Information Technology), teamwork is very important on each and every stage of the project. Quality also comes first on any project, in order to give up to date work to the client.

Quality promise is a methodical and long-standing work. Data have evidently proved that, to make sure the quality of product and avoid the defects is more vital than setting up and correcting errors. While working as a team, each and every member should pay attention to prevent defects while implementation of a project. Improving the quality of product is not only the responsibility of testers and leaders of team but each member should also take responsibility to control and maintain the project. At some point clients should also take responsibility of quality check in order to give feedback to developers.

Project Manager is a very significant position to make sure the quality of project. In the beginning, Project manager must certify that each and every members of a team has the clear understanding of the needs and requirements of the client. After that, any team member will be responsible to describe the project range precisely. This will also help them to create the project plan intelligently. During the entire implementation procedure, the project manager will be responsible to supervise the performance of team’s on each and every job, examine and manage project movement. In addition, the project manager is also in charge for communication with high level management and clients as well. On the whole, ensure that the project is running in budget, on agenda and also in time line with the requirements of clients.

Planner is responsible for selecting and creating the most appropriate structural design for a particular system that matches the industry requirements, achieves the requirements of users, and also achieves the preferred outcome below specified constraints. A high-quality structural design is the establishment of victorious software creation, so structural design is an important to guarantee the quality of a particular product.

Software Developers are mainly associated with the quality of software, because the quality of developers identifies the value of every piece of codes they implement. Software developers are extremely dependable for the quality of the software codes implemented by them. Additionally to obey the software code principles, they also have to pass through unit test to make sure the quality of their codes and also need to certify that codes are in particular standard or not. In addition, understanding of software requirement, achieving submission of work deadlines, daily work flow report to the leader of a team, manager as well as discussion with clients is also the part of software developer’s responsibilities.

Software Testers are extremely necessary in protection of quality. They can make sure the quality of each and every function of software. In relation to quality assurance method, testers are generally involved in project at the very beginning phase in order to assist them in preventing defects quickly. Role of software testers also includes test designing, finding bugs, debugging and generating report on test result.

Clients / Customer also plays a vital role to gain high quality work. Initially it is quite important that client can convey his / her necessity exactly and widely to software tester in order to provide accurate understanding to all team members, leaders and managers. In addition, the clients / customer should also be able to manage the constancy of software requirements. If the clients are eager to observe the project development jointly with our team members or leaders, it would help our team members. Discussing problems and requirements would also be very quick and easy. It would be appreciated as well. Lastly, the client’s motivation to work in the company of our team members is very helpful for healthier assistance and efficient communication. On the whole, working as a team (teamwork) is the solution to achieve or build high quality project or software. Every role in the project / software development lifecycle team has very significant purpose to check the quality of product. Even though each member has different responsibility according to their role, we all have equal objective to obtain high quality.

Why good teamwork is critical?

There are several reasons behind considering industry teamwork is critical for each corporation. Main reason industry teamwork is critical is because it allows people to depend on other members of team.  Industry teamwork is also allowing people to collaborate as a team to boost efficiency, to communicate effectively and also to acquire risks with the intention to succeed in any project. If the businesses are having staff task as individuals and not as a team, they are not as victorious. Teamwork allows individual members to depend on other team members when they are looking for support.  They are not leaving them unaccompanied trying to figure out for themselves.  Sometimes people turn up with inventive ideas by eliminating issues.  When a single team member is alone and he / she is trying to sort out something, amount of efficiency and productivity will go down and it will take more time to solve every single problem. Then this will lead to miss deadlines of a particular project and turnover tempo of each and every employee will go higher.

Teamwork also allows members to assist as a group.  Teamwork creates a constructive environment and it is effective in day to day tasks as well. When some team members are working individually / alone on a project without the help of other members of a team, they often feel frustration while working.  It might create unfriendliness in individuals. When they work alone they often feel heavy work load. But when people assist and work together, they contribute the workload between their team members and meet up milestones as one.  Better working environment is necessary in order to work continuously.

Teamwork allows members of team to obtain attentive risks.  The reason behind that is when many team members are working jointly; they will be able to express more and more ideas. 

For instance, if the team is having one member who is expressing ideas of taking risks and another member who is ready to solve problems which occurs while taking those risks,

When the person is working on his / her own (Individual), they mostly scared to take risks because they knows that if something goes wrong, whole responsibility comes on their role. They do not want to enter in to the problem or they also think that it does not look good in the presence of their other team members. While members of team are working jointly, they don’t really afraid of taking risk; this will help them in creating more successful and productive working environment. While working as a group helps them in expanding their creativity as well.

Teamwork always creates an interactive atmosphere. Interactive atmosphere (in other words communication) is quite necessary in every organization.

When someone is working alone on project, other members of team think that weather the task is running on time or not and also is it running according to the guidelines or not. The reason is other team members are not aware of his / her progress of a particular project.

At this time lack of communication comes up. Good team member always give update to his / her other members of a team about the project which he/she is working on. While working as a team each member, team leader or manager should keep their communication level up to date in order to give updates to other members of a team that what is going on at each and every stage of the project. In some cases because of less communication skills more than one member of team start working on same task but at the end work gets doubled which is absolutely time consuming as well waste of resources. Working as a team is a very positive aspect in each task or stage of a project.

Other members of team should also understand that they should not left one member alone on one task. Many people have a capability to work on their own (alone) to be dynamic but other members of a team should also understand that he / she should not have whole project on his / her head.

Creating teamwork atmosphere helps to increase more flexibility in work and more productivity as well.

Conclusion

Teamwork is an idea which has developed over the previous 20 years. Still, the success and achievement of teamwork does not appear automatically. Teams must be recognized according to their accurate reasons. Selection of members for team is very essential and vital part as we have to confirm that the goal and principle is agreed and understandable.