The 109th Installment
Action Design to Achieve Good Teamwork

by Ayano Ohsaki,
Assistant Professor, Master Program of Information Systems Architecture

Teamwork is like riding a bicycle. Simply understanding the mechanisms at work in moving forward is not enough to ride a bicycle. Fine control must be acquired. Which is to say, practice and trial and error are important. However, starting off knowing where the brakes and pedals are can shorten practice time.

At a time when almost every job in the world requires that we work together with others, there are no doubt many things which make us feel that working in teams is difficult. How can we act so as to achieve good teamwork? The "action design" approach—or designing one's actions —provides a hint. This approach is knowing where the "brakes and pedals are" in the bicycle metaphor. This column will discuss action design for groups, targeting those interested in achieving effective teamwork.

Knowledge gleaned from past experience will be helpful in achieving action design aimed at making a group function well as a team. People have developed conditions for good teamwork based on group goals and circumstances. It is difficult, however, to design action so as to satisfy many conditions from the outset. Let us therefore consider action design with a focus on three areas: goals, participation, and communication.

1. Setting team goals

First, team members establish what is to be achieved and to what extent (the scope) for their project. This is also the basis of project management. Yet, at the initial stage of teamwork, teams often spend too much time considering goals and never begin taking action. In such cases, rather than continuing to discuss what goal to set, it is useful to take action toward a provisional goal while allowing for possible refinement later. Furthermore, goal setting can become more difficult depending on the freedom one has for setting goal parameters made easier depending on how much freedom you have to set the goal. Building a team from people with an interest in the established theme and deciding on conditions that goal achievement should satisfy are some of the means by which goal setting can be made easier.

2. Having all members participate

For the second condition, participation, the goal is for all members to contribute equally to the deliverable. An important point here is that "equivalent contribution" does not mean "same workload." For example, when inspecting a network service, network engineers can contribute to a deliverable by conducting technical inspections or providing explanations. Back office and marketing personnel can contribute to a deliverable by doing research or providing explanations from the perspective of the market. Responsible roles must therefore be decided for every member based on the assumption that they will contribute to the team's deliverable.

3. Creating systems to ensure smooth communication

There should be two kinds of communication: synchronous communication, carried out by people at the same time and in the same place, and asynchronous communication, conducted by members at different times and in different places. Use tools according to the goal, like conducting meetings for synchronous communication and using online forums for asynchronous communication. Carrying out asynchronous communication smoothly is an acquired skill. This is why team members will need to actively communicate asynchronously from the initial stages of the project, while also identifying issues and refining systems.

In this column, I discussed "goals," "participation," and "communication," the three most fundamental conditions for active design aimed at achieving good teamwork. For those who want to know more specifically how to satisfy these conditions, or who feel they satisfy the conditions but want to build an even better team, I provide a list of reference materials that are at this university's (AIIT) library. Please make use of them if needed.

For the course I run, I design a number of things to be used in practicing Project Based Learning (PBL), which includes these three conditions but also group size, task difficulty, and feedback. If you have a chance to take my course, you may find it interesting to think about how I cover these issues.