Before beginning your project it is important to understand how to best organize your group to achieve success. The goal of this assignment is to help clarify and understand issues of group dynamics that may influence your team's performance. Some of the topics are sensitive. Be as honest as possible and remember to respect other people's feelings and opinions.

Group process task:

This is a two part task. Your group should reserve an hour to complete the six steps in Part I, and an hour to complete Part II. Team members should have copies of their weekly schedules available to complete Part I. Part II guides you through produ ction of your Group Process Plan, due in class on Monday, February 8.

1. Introduce yourself to your teammates and summarize your goals for this course. Talk about the unique skills and knowledge you add to your team. On a sheet of paper, make an inventory of all the skills and knowledge represented by the members of your group.

2. With your team, share fears and anxieties you have about group work. Record these concerns, and for each one write down a strategy to overcome that concern. Talk about how your team can incorporate these strategies this semester.

3. Discuss your membership in this project team in the context of your other group and organizational responsibilities. Talk about the pull of divided loyalties and the demands of other classes and activities. Have each team member submit a weekly sc hedule showing existing obligations. Delegate one person to identify common meeting times based on the analysis of these schedules.

4. Discuss a system of group accountability. For other groups that you belong to, share ways that people are held accountable. Talk about how people in your project team will know: a) what tasks to perform; b) when these tasks should be performed; an d c) how people will receive feedback about the quality of their performance. Individually, write down how you feel about freeriding and freeriders. As a team, read these statements aloud and use them to explore how your team will cope with freeriding.

5. Discuss the communication style your team should adopt in terms of potential for conflict, suitability to team tasks and goals, and suitability to the needs and personalities of team members. As a team, make a list of communication characteristics that increase and decrease access to the set of skills and knowledge possessed within the team. Talk about how your team can encourage positive, helpful, and accurate communication.

6. Discuss how your team will organize to perform its work. With your team, share models of organizing from other groups you belong to and note their suitability or lack of suitability to your project team. Explore the assumptions your team holds abo ut structure and roles, particularly leadership roles, and talk about how these assumptions may facilitate or retard your team's progress.

Use your group's responses in Part I to write your Group Process Plan. When complete, the plan will be a three page, double-spaced document that explains how your group will be organized and how you plan to cope with potential problems. Th e Group process plan is worth 10% of your grade.

Your plan should include the following elements (with recommended page limits). Label each section clearly:
a) Team information -- project title; contact information for each team member (phone and email); the group X.500 mailing list; client site; client contact information (address, phone number, and email)
b) Team inventory (.5 page) -- a list of salient skills and knowledge held by team members as identified in Step 1 of Part I.
c) Process concerns (.5 page) -- list the dominant concerns identified in Step 2 of Part I and the group's strategies for overcoming these concerns.
d) Schedule and obligations (.5 page) -- for each team member list critical external obligations; in a table for weekdays (columns) and hours (rows) indicate common meeting times identified by your group, as per Step 3 of Part I.
e) Accountability (.5 page) -- from Step 4 above, explain how group members will know what tasks to do, when to do these tasks, and how members will receive feedback about the quality of their task performance.
f) Communications (.5 page) -- from Step 5 above, explain how your group will overcome communication difficulties imposed by lack of a common physical location (e.g., no office), geographically distributed members, and conflicting work/class schedules; pl ease list specific solutions you plan to use (e.g., private conference on course WebBoard, phone conferences, online conferences, and so forth).
g) Organization (.5 page) -- based on your discussion for Step 6 in Part I, explain how your group will be organized to complete your team's project (e.g., manager and subordinates; non-hierarchical; ad hoc; and so on). Please be specific. For example, if you opt for a hierarchical arrangement, how will leaders be selected? If you opt for a non-hierarchical arrangement, how will you ensure accountability?

Due: In class, Monday, February 8

Last modified by Tom Finholt 12/21/98