Individual Reflections for High Performance Collaboration Team Project

Team Practices:

 

Communication Methods

 

In our team Quartet, all team members always use WeChat, Gmail and face-to-face meeting to communicate with each other, because WeChat is very convenient for chatting in time and effectiveness, while Gmail is used to transform some formal documents. WeChat has been high frequency used, since we built a WeChat group to communicate our ideas about the objectives, common vision and structure of the virtual community with each other, and to discuss and decide face-to-face meeting content and meeting time. We would send our brainstorming ideas to each other via WeChat anytime. Of course, it is in an informal way. But when we need to share some important information or decision, such as task allocation, meeting time with the team Wings, feedback from the Lecturer, collaboration proposal and so on, we would like to document these information and share through Gmail. The face-to-face meeting was set up frequently, normally one or two times each week, since our team members are in the same programme and take classes together, we meet each other quite frequently. If we needed to discuss about the collaboration project, like the project proposal, how to deal with the divergence with team Wings, team project task allocation and so on.

 

 

Effective of Technology Used Routines

 

On the one hand, WeChat works quite well to facilitate effectively communication across our team members. Due to different study habit of each member, someone prefers to study at home, while someone likes to study at school, so we usually communicate via WeChat about some less important points without going to a certain place. It helps to save time and cost. And WeChat also has the voice message function so that we can discuss some views anywhere and anytime. This makes us get feedback from other members immediately. On the other hand, the use of Gmail did not perform such well and sometimes even hamper our team’s work, because not every member checks email every day, some documents transferred through Gmail are not viewed by all team members in time and we may not receive feedback about these documents from each other as well. For instance, our leader sent the project proposal for all members after the audio meeting with the team Wings. Some members did not check their Gmail account and gave feedback or suggestions about the proposal immediately. It caused us to spend more time for reading the project proposal at the next meeting so that we can continue our discussion.

 
 

In summary, in general speaking, our team coordinates its work across members effectively with the application of WeChat and Gmail. But Gmail did not work as well as WeChat, due to Gmail was less of reminding function so that members can notice a new email immediately.

 

 

 

Logic Decision Making Process

 

From my point of view, our team was actively making a decision regarding the team’s structure, timeline and goals. In detail, our team leader designed the timeline and asked suggestions from all members to finally decide when to discuss the common vision of collaboration project, to propose our idea, to discuss with team Wings, to modify the project proposal after negotiation with team Wings, and to come out task allocation of group blog. At the beginning of collaboration with team Wings, we discussed the common norm of collaboration with team Wing was seeking common points while reserving differences in our inner group meeting. We also treated this common norm as our inner group working principle. Thus, when we made a decision together, we would follow this rule strictly.

 

For example, the second audio meeting with team Wings was mainly used to decide the collaboration approach to build up the virtual community, but both team leaders insisted its own idea. Our tam proposed a software social enterprise and a supermarket to collaborate via a mobile application. This mobile application is like a pedometer to record data when users are hiking, running, cycling and climbing and automatically sends the data to an information system. The software social enterprise is responsible for developing this mobile application and managing the information system. Each user has an e-account on the IS and the IS helps to convert data to scores for using them as coupons to buy things in the supermarket. However, team Wings pointed out that this mobile application may not be widely accepted by people, since they have many other ways to get free coupons and the software social enterprise does not have much influence on consumers. By considering feedback from team Wings, our team discussed about it in our inner group meeting and found that our proposed idea may not perform quite in that situation. We could not bring expected business and social value to both communities. After negotiation, we compromised and tried to seek middle ground to combine idea from the other team and our idea together.

 

 

Conflicts within Our Team

 

Firstly, the task conflict in our team was that two members believed team Wing’s idea was more feasibility, while the other members persisted our team’s idea was better. We had a face-to-face to solve this task conflict and try to find out some common factors between two ideas so that to integrate them together by following the seeking common points principle. The whole discussion process and methods used in our meeting to solve the conflict is concluded on in the following table. You can see that we tried to apply compromise, avoidance, accommodation, competition and collaboration instruments to find out an integrated proposal and finally resolve the task conflict.

 

Table 1 Description of How to Solve the Task Conflict

Conflict	Handling Intention	Behaviour	Result
Two persistent ideas	Compromising	Admitted both ideas were imperfect	An integrated proposal
	Avoiding	Didn’t assess influence and creativity
	Accommodating	Used Wing’s idea as the base of integration
	Competing	Pointed out and explained what unreasonable or undoable parts were
	Collaborating	Proposed new factors which were able to satisfy all parties and expand pie

 

Secondly, all members cannot attend face-to-face meeting on time in the first two times could be treated as a process conflict in our team. This situation always delayed meeting time and wasted time. We knew we had to find a way to solve this problem. Therefore, all members discussed and agreed to set next meeting time half an hour before the real meeting time. For example, if we wanted to have a face-to-face meeting at 10 o’clock, we would let each other to meet at 9:30. Because some persons like to appear nearly 10:00, someone will present not later than 9:45, this approach worked well in our team and improved work efficiency.

 

 

The last conflict is the relationship conflict in our team which refers to the interpersonal relationship between the team leader and other members. Due to differing individual value systems and different personality types of each member, we normally need to face the relationship conflict in a collaboration project. When there were differences and contradictions in our team discussion, we would firstly try to analyze the problem in a logic and rational way, but the result was we always listened to the leader’s opinion. I think it can belong to two reasons: one is that our leader is a little bit bigoted; the second is that other members think the leader is really work hard on the project and contributes a lot, so we should give him the relative recognition. In my opinion, we cannot meet all concerns of all members, we have to avoid or ignore this kind of conflict so long as the leader’s decision may not bring bad effects on the performance of the collaboration project. Besides, table 2 gives a short summary about solving process and result of the task conflict, process conflict and relationship conflict in our team.

 

Table 2 Summary of Three Kinds of Conflicts in Our Team

Conflict	Weather Model	Solving Behaviour	Result
Task Conflict	Fog	Proposed new factors which were able to satisfy all parties and expand pie	Come out an integrated proposal
Process Conflict	Sunshine	Set up meeting time half an hour before it really starting	All members arrived at the really start meeting time
Relationship Conflict	Rain	Accept leader’s opinion	Avoid, no chance of satisfying all members’ concerns

 

 

Team Processes:

When our team first came together, all team members did not make any promises or commitments in a formal way. But during the completing project process, we gave tacit consent to some common rules as commitments. These common rules included to seek common points while reserving differences, trust each other, open and direct communication among members, punctuality, and in-time feedback and summary. When I first joined the team, I did not make any oral commitments to the team. But the opposite was also true. However, I said to myself when I joined the team, I would present meeting on time, actively participate in discussion, trust other members, respect other members and effectively collaborate with others. In practice, I realized most commitments except actively participation. And in return, the group gave me respect and recognition.

In addition, I have shared my opinions and proposals about how to build the virtual community. But I did not perform quite well in solving the relationship conflict in our group. As I said before, when we had different opinions with the leader, we always followed what the leader said in the end. I chose to ignore this conflict instead of facing and solving it, because I thought it was unnecessary to retort upon the leader if his decision did not influence the final quality of project even though I did disagree with leader in some factors. I believed our group was successful in completing a high quality project. Of course, this success cannot leave without good collaboration of the whole group. Our team has tried our best to seek to integrate the interests of project affected. When our team members worked together, I understood accommodate and compromise should be treated as two main factors in promoting the collaboration process. And in reality, all members have done that and worked well together.

 

Appendix

Each Audio Meeting Summary

Regular Meeting Summary – #1

Date & Time	2012-03-04, 22:30-23:00
Presenter	/
Attendees	All of Quartet & Wings
Recorder	Henry

 

Delivery / Discussion

#	Task / Issue	PIR / Respondent	Status / Answer
1	Self-introduction	All	Name, prog., current job, working exp., strengths and etc.
2	Interest of industry and collaboration form	All	A social entrepreneurial collaboration between a for-profit company and a NGO
3	Regular meeting management process	All	Refer to Distribution
4	Collaboration and communication tools	All	Meeting: Skype Informal contact: WeChat Formal contact: Gmail Doc Sharing: DropBox (DB)

 

Distribution

#	Task	PIC	Participants	Deadline
1	Create and share the DropBox link	Chung	All	03-05, 23:00
2	Make a meeting summary template	Jane	Sophia, Henry	03-07, 23:00
3	Write and share an initial proposal of a virtual NGO	Jane	Wings	03-08, 23:00
4	Write and share an initial proposal of a virtual Company	Henry	Quartet	03-08,23:00
5	Think the collaboration approach and outcomes by the angle of own representative organization	/	All	03-09, 9:00

 

Next Meeting

2012-03-09, 10:00-11:30

 

 

 

Regular Meeting Summary – #2

Date & Time	2012-03-09, 10:00-11:30
Presenter
Attendees	All of Quartet & Wings
Recorder

 

Delivery / Discussion

#	Task / Issue	PIR / Respondent	Status / Answer
1	Create and share the DropBox link	Chung	Done
2	Explain the proposal of a virtual NGO	Jane	An  elder service NGO who wants to attract more volunteers and participants
3	Explain the proposal of a virtual Company	Henry	A mobile software company who wants to enhance marketing performance
4	Discuss two proposals and possible collaboration	All	For the NGO: Embody the existing service and volunteer requirements For the company: Enlarge or redefine its biz scope or industry For collaboration: Mobile online community and data mining may be suitable approaches

 

Distribution

#	Task	PIC	Participants	Deadline
1	Confirm with Frank if the mobile OC is allowed	Henry	/	03-10, 23:00
2	Modify proposals by feedback Upload on DB	Henry / Jane	Quartet / Wings	03-11, 23:00
3	Draft collaboration conditions, expectations and potential approaches based on the company’s proposal Upload on DB			03-13, 23:00
4	Give feedback to proposals and collaboration draft on DB	/	All	03-16, 9:00

 

Next Meeting

2012-03-16, 10:00-11:30