Leading technology--intensive project teams

Abstract

A three-year field study of 76 technology-based projects shows that effective team management involves a complex set of variables related to task, people, and organizational environment. The results identify specific barriers and drivers to effective team performance and provide insight into the organizational environment and managerial leadership that is conducive to high project performance in technology-oriented team environments. Further, the results suggest that many of the performance criteria have their locus outside of the project organization. Yet, managerial leadership, at both the project level and senior management, has significant impact on the team environment that ultimately affects team and project performance. Project leaders must pay particular attention to the people side, managing relations across the entire work process, including support functions, suppliers, sponsors and partners. Criteria for leadership effectiveness and recommendations for improving project team performance are discussed.

Virtually all project managers recognize the critical importance of team leadership to project performance. Yet, building and sustaining high-performing project teams in today's dynamic and often turbulent environment is a daunting task. Most challenged seem to be managers in complex and technology-intensive situations characterized by high speed, high change and high uncertainty; where gaining and maintaining cohesiveness, commitment and effective technology transfer involves intricate and highly complex processes with self-directed teams, rapidly changing technology and requirements, resource limitations, and demands for flexibility and speedy implementation. Traditional models and rules of team management are often not effective or even counter-productive. Yet, many high-technology project teams produce desired results on time and budget, even under extremely tight time and resource constraints. While much research has been documented on project management style and effectiveness, relatively little is known about the leadership criteria conducive to high team performance in technology-intensive project environments. As a result, this field study was organized to investigate technology-based project teams regarding their effectiveness, innovative characteristics and overall performance.

Expanding Scope and Responsibilities for Team Members.

Teamwork is not a new idea. The basic concepts of organizing and managing teams go back in history to biblical times. However, it was not before the beginning of the Twentieth Century that work teams were formally recognized as an effective device for enhancing organizational performance. Specifically, the discovery of important social phenomena in the classic Hawthorne studies (Roethlingsberger & Dickinson,1939), led to new insight on group behavior and the benefits of work group identity and cohesion to performance (Dyer,1977). In today's more complex multinational and technologically sophisticated environment, the group has reemerged in importance as the project team (Fisher,1993; Nurick 1993; Thamhain & Wilemon, 1999). Supported by modern information and communication technologies, and consistent with the concepts of stakeholder management and learning organizations, the roles and boundaries of teams are expanding toward self-direction within more open, organizationally transparent processes. Project teams play an important role not only in traditional projects, such as new product developments, systems design and construction, but also in implementing organizational change, transferring technology concepts and in running election campaigns. Whether Yahoo creates a new search engine, Sony develops a new laptop computer, or the World Health Organization rolls out a new regional vaccination plan, success depends to a large degree on effective interactions among the team members responsible for the new development. This includes support groups, subcontractors, vendors, partners, government agencies, customer organizations and other project stakeholders (Armstrong, 2000; Barkema, Baum & Mannix, 2002; Dillon 2001; Gray & Larson, 2000; Thamhain, 2003). Globalization, privatization, digitization, and rapidly changing technologies have transformed our economies into a hyper-competitive enterprise system where virtually every organization is under pressure to do more things faster, better and cheaper. Effective teamwork is seen as a key success factor in deriving competitive advantages from these developments. At the same time, the process of team building has become more complex and requires more specialized management skills as bureaucratic hierarchies decline and horizontally oriented teams and work units evolve.

This has strong implications for organizational process and leadership. Not too long ago, project managers could ensure successful integration of their projects by focusing on properly defining the work, timing and resources, and by following established procedures for project tracking and control. Today, these factors are still crucial. However, they have become threshold competencies, critically important, but unlikely to guarantee by themselves project success. Today's complex business world requires fast and flexible project teams who can work dynamically and creatively toward established objectives in a changing environment (Bhatnager, 1999, Jasswalla & Sashittal, 1999; Thamhain, 2002). This requires effective networking and cooperation among people from different organizations, support groups, subcontractors, vendors, government agencies, and customer communities. It also requires the ability to deal with uncertainties and risks caused by technological, economic, political, social, and regulatory factors. In addition, project leaders have to organize and manage their teams across organizational lines. Dealing with resource sharing, multiple reporting relationships and broadly based alliances is as common in today's business environment as email, flex-time and home offices.

Because of these complexities and uncertainties, traditional forms of hierarchical team structure and leadership are seldom effective and are being replaced by self-directed, self-managed team concepts (Barner, 1997; Thamhain & Wilemon, 1999). Often the project manager becomes a social architect who understands the interaction of organizational and behavioral variables, facilitates the work process and provides overall project leadership for developing multidisciplinary task groups into unified teams, and fostering a climate conducive to involvement, commitment and conflict resolution.

Objective, Scope and Method

The Objective of this Paper is to explore the principle factors that influence technology-based team performance. Because of the complexities, and the absence of specific theories or constructs, an exploratory field research format has been chosen for the investigation, involving questionnaires and two qualitative methods: participant observation and in-depth retrospective interviewing. Specifically, data were captured between 2000 and 2003 from 27 R&D organizations, most of them part of large corporations of the Fortune-500 category. For each of the 27 organizations, the research was conducted in three stages. In the first stage, interviews with project leaders and project team personnel, together with hands-on participant observations, helped to understand (a) the specific nature and challenges of the R&D process within the company under investigation, (b) to prepare for the proper introduction of the questionnaire, and (c) to design the follow-up interviews. During the second stage, data were collected as part of a management consulting or training assignment, by questionnaire, observation, and expert panel. The third stage relied mostly on in-depth retrospective interviewing, providing perspective and additional information for clarifying and leveraging the data captured in stage one and two. As part of the action research, the data collection included other relevant source material, such as project progress reports, company reports, design review memos, committee action reports, financial statements and information from the public media. These sources were especially helpful in designing questionnaires, interviews and validating observations.

The purpose of this combined data collection method was to leverage the information-gathering process for identifying the drivers and barriers to innovative team performance, and for gaining insight into its management process. This combined method is particularly useful for new and exploratory investigations, such as the study reported here, which is considerably outside the framework of established theories and constructs (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Eisenhardt, 1989). The format and process of the specific questionnaires and in-depth semi-structured interviews used in this study, was developed and tested in previous field studies of R&D management, similar in context to the current investigation (Thamhain and Wilemon, 1990, 1996, 1999; Kruglianskas and Thamhain, 2000).

Data

The unit of analysis used in this study is the project. The field study, conducted between 2000 and 2003, yielded data from 76 project teams with a total sample population of 895 professionals such as engineers, scientists, and technicians, plus their managers, including 16 supervisors, 76 project team leaders, 18 product managers, 8 directors of R&D, 7 directors of marketing, and 11 general management executives at the vice presidential level. Together, the data covered over 180 projects in 27 companies. The R&D projects involved mostly high-technology product/service developments with budgets averaging $1,200,000 each. All project teams saw themselves working in a high-technology environment. The 27 host companies are large technology-based, multinational companies, mostly of the “FORTUNE-500” category¹. The data were obtained from three sources, questionnaires, participant observation and in-depth retrospective interviewing, as discussed in the previous section.

A questionnaire was developed to measure the (a) characteristics of the work environment, including its leadership and (b) team performance, including overall team performance, effort and innovative results on project teams and individual contributors. To minimize potential biases that might result from the use of social science jargon, specific statements were developed to describe each of the 14 variables of the work environment and each of the five team-performance measures. For characterizing the project environment, team members were ask to think about their work environment, and indicate their agreement with a series of statements on a five-point Likert-type scale: (a) strongly disagree, (b) disagree, (c) neutral, (d) agree, (e) strongly agree. For example, to measure the perception of interesting, stimulating work, team members were asked to indicate their agreement with the statements such as “my job is interesting and professionally stimulating” and “I always enjoy my work”. The perception of recognition and accomplishment was measured with statements, such as “my work leads to significant accomplishments,” “my efforts are being appreciated and properly recognized by the organization.” Similarly, team performance variables were measured on a five-point scale (a) poor, (b) marginal, (c) good, (d) very good and (e) excellent. Performance judgments were solicited from senior management. Hence, an independent set of scores was obtained on each of the environmental and performance variables. This method allowed the researcher to rank teams by (a) the characteristics of their work environments in each of the 13 variables, and (b) each of the three performance measures, which then became the input data for the rank-order correlation summarized in Table 1 & 2. Further, data were captures during 138 interviews with the team leaders and line managers. Especially the interviews with product managers, marketing directors and general management executives were designed to gain insight into the issues and challenges of cross-functional integration necessary for successful technology transfer. The findings have been integrated into the Implications and Discussion Section of this paper for additional perspective.

Data Analysis.

 Standard statistical methods were used to summarize the survey data such as shown in Exhibits 1 & 2. The agreement among the various populations was tested using Kruskal-Wallis analysis of variance by ranks. Further, the association among the various sets of variables was measured using Kendall's Tau rank-order correlation. Because the organizational and behavioral variables investigated do not necessarily follow normal distribution, non-parametric statistical methods are deemed more robust and appropriate2. In addition to the statistical methods for testing agreements among populations and for determining correlations, content analysis has been used for evaluating the qualitative part of the interviews, questionnaires, observations and action research.

Characteristics of a High-Performance Team Environment

One of the consistent and most striking findings from the field study is the need for increasing involvement of all project stakeholders throughout the organization and its external partners. Managers point out, that for today's technology-based undertakings, project success is no longer the result of a few expert contributors and skilled project leaders. Rather, project success depends on effective multidisciplinary efforts, involving teams of people and support organizations interacting in a highly complex, intricate, and sometimes even chaotic way. The process requires experiential learning, trial and error, risk taking, as well as the cross-functional coordination and integration of technical knowledge, information, and components. Most managers see technology-intensive project work as a fuzzy process that cannot always be described objectively or planned perfectly, nor can its results be predicted with certainty. Furthermore, project performance itself is difficult to define and measure, as discussed in the sidebar of this page. Yet, in spite of all these challenges, many project teams produce highly desired results. This suggests that technology-based projects can be managed, given the right team environment. This proposition is explored within this field study.

Using Kendall's Tau rank-order correlation, Exhibits 1 and 2 summarize the association among factors of the organizational environment and project team performance, listed in order of importance to overall team performance. The presence and strength of these organizational variables was measured on a five-point scale as a perception of project team members, while project performance was measured as a perception of senior management as discussed in the method section of this paper. As indicated by the two strongest correlations, factors that fulfill professional esteem needs seem to have a particularly favorable influence on project team performance. The five most significant associations are: (a) professionally stimulating and challenging work environments [τ=.45], (b) opportunity for accomplishments and recognition [τ=.38], (c) the ability to resolve conflict and problems [τ=.37], (d) clearly defined organizational objectives relevant to the project [τ=.36], and (e) job skills and expertise of the team members appropriate for the project work [τ=.36]. These influences appear to deal effectively with the integration of goals and needs between the team member and the organization. In this context, the more subtle factors seem to become catalysts for cross-functional communication, information sharing, and ultimate integration of the project team with focus on desired results. The other favorable factors in Exhibit 1 relate to overall directions and team leadership [τ=.35], trust, respect and credibility among team members and their leaders [τ=.30], and business process, as reflected by cross-functional cooperation and support [τ=.27], communications [τ=.27], clear project plans [τ=.25], clearly defined authority relations, and sufficient autonomy and freedom of actions in line with the managerial expectations and accountabilities [τ=.23]. To a lesser degree, opportunities for career development and advancement [τ=.12], as well as job security [τ=.12], seem to have a positive influence. All associations are significant at p =.1 or better, with the most significant correlations of p = .01 or stronger shown in bold italics. It is interesting to note that the same conditions, which are conducive to overall team performance, also lead to (a) a higher ability of dealing with risks and uncertainties and (b) a stronger personal effort and commitment to established objectives, and their team members, as shown in the correlation table. The field data analysis moreover supports the expectation that project teams that are perceived as effective by their management, are also seen as (c) creative problem solvers who can (d) effectively utilize time and resources. In fact, a high degree of cross-correlation exists among the set of four of variables, as measured via Kruskal-Wallis analysis of variance by rank³ The test shows that managers agree on the ranking of team performance factors in Exhibit 1 at a confidence level of 98%. That is, managers who rate the team performance high in one category are likely to give high ratings also to the other three categories.

In addition to the thirteen most significant characteristics reported in Exhibit 1, it is interesting to note that many other characteristics of the work environmental, that were perceived by managers as important to innovative performance, did not correlate significantly as measured by a p-level threshold of .10. As summarized in Exhibit 2, among the factors of lesser influence to innovation are: (a) salary, (b) time-off, (c) project visibility and popularity, (d) maturity of the project team, measured in terms of time worked together as a team, (e) project duration, (f) stable project requirements with minimum changes, (g) stable organizational structures & processes with minimal organizational changes such as caused by mergers, acquisitions and reorganization, (h) minimum technological interdependencies, such as caused by the dependency on multiple technologies, technological disciplines and processes, (i) project size and project complexity, arguing that projects which are perceived by the team to exceed a comfort level of complexity or size will lead to lower project team performance. It is further interesting to see that several of the weaker influences shown in Table 2, actually have a negative association to team performance. For example, it appears that, the more stable the project requirements or the organizational environment, the less overall team performance is to be expected. While these correlations are clearly non-significant from a statistical point of view, they shed some additional light on the subtle and intricate nature of project team performance in technology-intensive environments. From a different perspective, it is interesting that most influences supporting intrinsic professional needs show a strong favorable performance correlation, while the findings give only weak support to extrinsic influences and factors derived from the project metrics, as shown in Exhibit 2. This is in spite the fact that influences in both Exhibits 1 and 2 where perceived by managers as critically important to team performance. This finding suggests that managers are more accurate in their perception of team members’ intrinsic, rather than extrinsic needs. It also seems to be more difficult to assess the impact of project parameters, such as size, duration or complexity, than the impact of human needs on project work performance.

Exhibit 1
Strongest Drivers Toward Innovative Team Performance (Kendall's Tau Rank-Order Correlation)

All variables were measured with descriptive statements on a 5-point Likert scale: (1) strongly disagree, (2) disagree, (3) neutral, (4) agree, (5) strongly agree.
Statements were judged by team members [*] and senior management [#], as indicated.
Statistical Significance: p=.10 (τ≥.20), p=.05 (τ≥.31), p=.01 (τ≥.36); correlation of p=.01 or stronger are marked in bold italics.

Exibit 2
Weakest Drivers Toward Innovative Team Performance (Kendall's Tau Rank-Order Correlation)

All variables were measured with descriptive statements on a 5-point Likert scale: (1) strongly disagree, (2) disagree, (3) neutral, (4) agree, (5) strongly agree.
Statements were judged by team members [*] and senior management [#], as indicated.
Statistical Significance: p=.10 (τ≥.20), p=.05 (τ≥.31), p=.01 (τ≥.36); correlation of p=.01 or stronger are marked in bold italics.

Implications and Discussion

The empirical results presented in this paper show that specific conditions in the team environment appear most favorable to project team work. These conditions serve as bridging mechanisms, helpful in enhancing project performance in technology-based organizations. Considering the exploratory nature of this study, an attempt is being made to go beyond the obvious results of the statistical data and to integrate some of the lessons learned from the broader context of the action research. The interviews and observations conducted for proper formulation, introduction and follow-up of the questionnaires, were especially useful in gaining additional perspective and insight into the processes and challenges of teamwork; they also helped in gleaning lessons for effective technical project management.

Leadership - The Art of Creating a Supportive Work Environment

 An important lesson follows from the analysis of these field observations. Managers must foster a work environment supportive to their team members. As shown by the statistical correlation, factors that satisfy personal and professional needs seem to have the strongest effect on the project team performance. The most significant drivers are derived from the work itself, including personal interest, pride and satisfaction with the work, professional work challenge, accomplishments and recognition. Other important influences include effective communications among team members and support units across organizational lines, good team spirit, mutual trust and respect, low interpersonal conflict, plus opportunities for career development and advancement and, to some degree, job security. All of these factors help in building a unified project team that can leverage the organizational strengths and competencies effectively, and produce integrated results that support the organization's mission objective. Creating such a climate and culture conducive to quality teamwork involves multifaceted management challenges which increase with the complexities of the project and its organizational environment. No longer will technical expertise or good leadership alone be sufficient, but excellence across a broad range of skills and sophisticated organizational support is required to manage project teams effectively. Hence, it is critically important for project leaders to understand, identify and minimize the potential barriers to team development. Leading such self-directed teams can rarely be done “top-down,” but requires a great deal of interactive team management skills and senior management support. Tools such as the Project Maturity Model and the Six Sigma Project Management Process can serve as framework for analyzing and fine-tuning the team development and management process.

Managing Team Formation and Development

No work group comes fully integrated and unified in their values and skill sets, but needs to be carefully nurtured and developed. Managers must realize the organizational dynamics involved during the various phases of the team development process. They must understand the professional interests, anxieties, communication needs, and challenges of their team members and anticipate them as the team goes through the various stages of its development. Many of the problems that occur during the formation of the new project team or during its life cycle are normal and often predictable. However, they present barriers to effective team performance. The problems must be quickly identified and dealt with. That is, team leaders must recognize what works best at each stage, and what is most conducive to the team development process. Tools such as focus groups, interface charts and the Four-Stage Model of Team Development (originally developed by Hersey and Blanchard), can help in identifying the leadership style and organizational support needed in facilitating effective and expedient team developments.

The effective team leader is a social architect who understands the interaction of organizational and behavioral variables and can foster a climate of active participation and minimal dysfunctional conflict. This requires carefully developed skills in leadership, administration, organization, and technical expertise. It further requires the ability to involve top management, to ensure organizational visibility, resource availability and overall support for the project throughout its life cycle.

Conclusion

Succeeding in today's ultra-competitive word of business is not an easy feat. No single set of broad guidelines exist that guarantees success. However, project success is not random! A better understanding of the criteria and organizational dynamics that drive project team performance, can assist managers in developing a better, more meaningful insight into the organizational process and critical success factors that drive project team performance.

One of the most striking findings is that many of the factors that drive project team performance are derived from the human side. Organizational components that satisfy personal and professional needs seem to have the strongest effect on commitment, the ability to deal with risk and contingencies, and overall team performance. Most significant are those influences derived from the work itself. People who find their assignments professionally challenging, leading to accomplishments, recognition and professional growth, also seem to function more effectively in a technology-intensive team environment. Such a professionally stimulating ambience also lowers communication barriers, increases the tolerance for conflict and risk taking, and enhances the desire to succeed.

Other influences to project team performance are derived from the organizational process, which have their locus outside the project organization, and are controlled by senior management. Organizational stability, availability of resources, management involvement and support, personal rewards, stability of organizational goals, objectives and priorities, are all derived from organizational systems that are controlled by general management. Project team leaders must work with senior management to ensure an organizational ambience conducive to effective team work. Leaders of successful project teams create a sense of community across the whole enterprise. That is, they understand the factors that drive team performance and create a work environment conducive to such a behavior. Effective project leaders can inspire their people, make everyone feel proud of being part of the project organization and its mission. Both clarity of purpose and alignment of personal and organizational goals are necessary for a unified team culture to emerge. Encouragement, personal recognition and visibility of the contributions to customer and company values helps to refuels and sustains commitment and unite the team behind its mission.