Empowering the team

Now you have a team,

But now for the real challenge

Making it work

Now that the team is set, (I had to work with 3 other members for this project) the first thing is to set the goals. In detail. 

We were tasked with creating a web-based web builder as our assignment. Something similar to www.weebly.com

So then, the leader is tasked with knowing what the skill gaps are. Therefore, know what needs to be known, and then know what the skills that are already at hand to create the needed software. This is sort of a balance between what can be done and what is to be done. 

So as an example, our site needed to be heavily web-technology-based. I came up with a very very rough idea what to do, just to get the idea of what I needed to KNOW to do my work. We also wanted to learn something new on the web-development side. So, I looked up tutorials for

• HTML5
• PHP
• CodeIgniter
• CSS
• JavaScript
• JQuery

 on good old youtube, and gave the task #1: find better tutorials than these!
Thus within a day the best ways to learn these tech was found.

The videos were divided into the weeks we had to learn (first 40% of the project time) taking a set number of hours a week. A major factor here is to be REALISTIC and PRACTICAL. Setting yourself goals that are just insane (like watch tutorials 2 hours a day) would clearly not work. And the members needed to have a sense of progress so that they are not bored out of doing their work. Motivation is key.

Have little mileposts along the way so that the people can tick them off, and the others can see the progress of the whole team. Communication is essential. Leave room for creativity too, tasking the members with little assignments using the tech that they newly learned. Then you discover the abilities of the team - so that you can use it better.

One big thing that is overlooked at this stage is the facilitation to DO work. Althought it's extra effort on the team leader's side; it is always very rewarding when leader knows all the elements of the team that makes it succeed or fail. Therefore he/she should know the environment that the members work on, the computers, the times they work, and how easy it is for them to collaborate with the others and how they are comfortable in contributing to the progress.

Make sure to tailor the work given to the individual and not from a scope that is judged from your level of expertise or working conditions.

The following pie chart will show you if you are not doing this well, and are not getting the results that you expect:

Details details details.