A negative situation that our team faced while working on the project can be described as an ongoing condition caused by the problems with our team members’ time management skills. This condition was initially the result of several individual cases, such as different team members not being able to come to the meeting or failing to do the executive summary on time. Such occurrences soon became tendencies, which, in turn, began to hinder all the work processes within the team. When one of the team members failed to complete his or her part of the assignment on time, the others could not start working on their tasks. In some cases, team members simply did not feel obliged to do so if some of their peers were impeding the development of the project anyway. All this events and attitudes resulted in several missed deadlines and the team’s inability to receive feedback in a timely manner.
It can be suggested that the situation occurred because our goal was too vague and general to keep everyone focused on completing their tasks on time. Many team members were concerned about this issue, including me. We suggested a discussion devoted to these concerns, and tried to involve the rest of the team members. Thus, one of my roles in influencing the change was explaining the problem that existed in our team to my peers and encouraging them to propose possible solutions. When we gathered to talk about this issue, I tried to explain what caused it and what it can lead to in terms of our teamwork processes. Me and other team members proposed several ideas and eventually formed our adapted key goal.
To ensure successful and timely completion of the project, we made a change to our Team Charter Revision 2. Our decision was to adopt a goal of making a proper work schedule for different parts of the project and have strict due dates for them. Moreover, we agreed to focus on the difficult tasks first, making sure that we have the time needed to complete them. Easier tasks were also thoroughly planned and distributed among the team members. This change was expected to have a significant impact on our future work by preventing similar situations from happening. If we adhere to our adapted key goal, we will be able to ensure that everyone is responsible for their own module of the project. Each team member will get help in managing their time to meet the due date. The project manager will be responsible for integrating the modules, overseeing the teamwork processes, and guiding the development of our project.
This change was commonly accepted as an effective solution to our problem. It made a substantial impact on the team’s ability to improve time management strategies because our adapted key goal was more specific and measurable. These aspects were successfully implemented due to the regular meetings that we planned as a way to measure and track the progress of each team member’s work. We wrote down our tasks and schedules, planning the work process step by step.
This situation will significantly affect the way we will write our Team Charter next term in ESP II. First of all, we will have to make sure we consider the importance of time management and include time management strategies into our work. Every team member will develop their schedules before they start working on the tasks assigned to them. To ensure that everyone is available for regular meetings, we will also develop a schedule that will be convenient for everyone; this will help us minimize the number of absences.