The Teams Belbin Profiles Management Essay

Published Date: 23 Mar 2015

During the project planning, management and control module, we were divided into different group in order to complete the management exercise, the name of our group is Radiohead. There are 5 people in our group, 3 males and 2 females. We played different role in the group, corporate with each other and made own contribution to complete the exercise. However, the final result is not satisfactory, the project to be finished in 156 day with 11k losses. The most important reason of failure is there was not enough thinking about risk control, when was a delay or failure of inspection, the work has to stop and start again in the period after next period, because we have not booked any labour in the next period, that will cause a butterfly effect then delay the whole project and bring up the cost. In addition, inefficiency of labour is also cause failure of project as well, we thought more labour can finish task quicker but we ignored more labour can cause inefficiency that may cause task delay. Furthermore, there was some problem about team working for example, lack of discussion; not enough participation of group member; decision-making was not democratic and so on. In this report I will critically analysis and evaluating the performance of our team and every team member in order to explore improvement of our team and help me to do better in future teamwork activity.

1.2 The team's Belbin profiles

There were 5 people in the team "Radiohead", colleague A (Shuai Jiang), B (Yifan Dou), C (I) are males and Colleague D (Zhengfei Cong) and E (Chen Sheng) are female. Every one played different roles within the team, which 'refer to a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with other at work in certain distinctive ways.'(Belbin1993, p24) Initially, colleague A was defined as a specialist and resource investigator, colleague B was monitor evaluator and teamwork, I was shaper and resource investigator, colleague D was coordinator and plant, and colleague E was implementer and team worker. There was one missing role or gap in the group which is completer finisher and there were no over-represented role or surpluses. However, most people played different role when we started working as a group. I became the leader of the group act as coordinator and shaper, because I was the first one who tried to motivate everyone to move on the project and assigned work for everyone, also clarify objective and organised the discussion. Colleague C changed his role from monitor evaluator to plant, because he always give us some new idea and solution for difficult problems, he also rather stays in the group to make some discussion than leave the group and explore some new opportunities. Colleague E acted like a monitor evaluator, criticising the work and made some judgement as well. Colleague D played most different between self test and practice. She was defined as coordinator and plant in the Belbin self perception inventory, but she did not contribute any idea for the project and instead just do what we tell her to do. Only colleague B act exactly same as what he have had been defined before group working - monitor evaluator and teamworker. In addition, the group performance was affected by the absence of a completer finisher in our team, there were always some errors and omission has been found by tutor after we submitted our plan. These problems were really easy to be discovered, but no one in the team was doing serious scrutinising line by line. Furthermore, because of colleague D transfer her role to team worker, we have over-presented roles or surplus during team working that caused inefficiency and less participation.

1.3 The team lifecycle

The model with four stages Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing has been developed in 1965 by Bruce Tuckman, which focuses on interpersonal relationship and task activity in order to help and explain team development. In 1970 he added the fifth stage to his model call adjourning. The first stage can be seen as 'testing and dependence' (Bonebright, 2010, P113). In the first working day, people did not clear about "what to do" and "how to do", they highly depended on direction from the leader, while testing the tolerance of leader. In my group, people all come from China, at this stage they are more like to talk about home town and Chinese food rather than the objective and define their team role and responsibility until shaper said "Come on! Let's we move on the project!" and tell them what to do next. In the next stage - Storming, Tuckman (1965, p.386) stated that 'group members become hostile toward one another and toward a therapist or trainer as a means of Expressing their individuality and resisting the formation of group structure.' During the second working day, people in my group started to know each other in terms of working style and abilities, also tried to show their abilities and personality in order to compete for positions and leadership. For example I wanted to be the leader of the group, but colleague E also wanted to win the leadership, so we have to test each other about knowledge and understanding of project, and then find out who was more capable to be the leader. In addition, there were some conflicts for the task as well. Group member held different view about the task, such us method of planning, labour allocation and so on. The decision was very difficult to be made in this stage by no agreement. Most of the problem has been solved in the third day, which is Norming stage. We started to discus different opinion without prejudice and accept different opinion from other people, made consensus about roles and leadership, as well as the way of working. Finally we move into performing stage in the Fourth day. We totally focused on the task. Everyone clear about their job and responsibility, also happy to help each other. We always organised a discussion before we submit amendment for next period and after if there was any trouble occurred. People stuck together to face all troubles, even when we failed to achieve the exercise, we still encouraged each other said "good job" to everyone. In the last stage adjourning stage in the last day, we have completed the project although it was failed. Every group member still wants the stay in this group for group exercise in other module, because we have experienced a lot during the whole week and closely bonded. We trusted each other and feared to work with other people and experience the whole process again.

1.4 Decision making procedures

Decision making is very important for a group, effective decision making procedure can produce high quality decision which, can help group to achieve its objective and provides satisfaction for group member. When we need make a decision that mean there was some problem need to be solved and people held different views about the solution. Therefore, firstly we did some information collection by talk to tutor or review the handout in order to defined the problem and find out the quickest solution. Secondly, group member tried to find better solution and provided different view or added more information about the solution. Thirdly we listed all options and analysis them by SWOT, then discussed every option and finally made the decision about it. For example, there was a huge delay on task D107 which is very important task, because it is on the critical path and would delay the whole project. At that time we have to make a quick decision between continue finish the task by ourselves that can keep us under budget but behind schedule, or a chose sub-contractor which can catch up the schedule but it would increase the cost. We analysed the current situation and solution by SWOT, then tried to reschedule the rest of task in order to see whether there was a time surplus or not, also recalculated the budget as well. However, there was still no consensus, and then we voted for it. There were 3 out of 5 agreed to choose sub-contractor, therefore, we made decision to hire a sub-contractor. In addition, during the whole process of decision making, there was a different attitude between male and female that males were more active then female. In my opinion, this difference was caused by culture, because we all come from China and in Chinese culture some female are happy to give the right of decision to male, especially when there is some important decision, and then just follow it. However, sometime this situation occur not only to female, some male also do not want to make decision, because they do not want to undertake the responsibility and do not want to be blamed by other group member, if the decision was wrong. Furthermore, the leadership was significant in the decision making process. The decision making in my group always cost a lot of time, because of long time situation analysis and solution discussion. I was the shaper and leader in the group, one of my jobs was to be a time keeper, so I made a lot of pressure on other people in order to make sure we can meet the deadline.

Conflict within the team

There are two types of conflict in the process of teamwork, which is functional conflict and dysfunctional conflict. According to Menon et al. (1996) dysfunctional conflict are 'unhealthy behaviours within an organization such as distortion and withholding of information to hurt other decision makers, hostility and distrust during interaction ([73] Thomas, 1992), and creating obstacles to impede the decision-making process ([68] Ruekert and Walker, 1987).' (Bobot, Lionel, 2001) There are a number of negative impacts on teamwork, for example it damages the relationship between group member and leader. In addition, it leads to making a wrong decision by holding latest information or providing wrong information. Furthermore, it disturbs the effective communication within group. In the whole week of exercise there was no dysfunctional conflict at all in my group, every group member made afford on making good relationship with others and willing to keep group working appropriately, also totally supported the leadership. At same time, there were many conflicts during roles selection and decision making, but all of them were functional conflict. Massey and Dawes (2007) state: 'Functional conflict is the constructive challenging of ideas, beliefs, and assumptions, and respect for others' viewpoints even when parties disagree.' (Bobot, Lionel, 2001) For example, during the planning stage we made a lot of conflicts about critical path and quantity of labours, some people pointed out that we should hire 8 labours to do the tasks on critical path instead of doing other task at same in order to decrease the length of project, but others hold different view about it, because of it would cause inefficient and increase risk of failure. Later, we argued about sub-contractors and supplier. Someone reckoned we need choose relatively expensive company because it is more reliable, but someone thought it would bring up our budget and felt there was no company can provide absolute safety. In my point of view, all these conflicts were positive and helpful by helping produce more options and alternative perspectives for decision making, as well as make people become closer to each other then create better working atmosphere within the group. Therefore, it is necessary to make functional conflict during group working which can provides positive outcome, and try to avoid dysfunctional conflict which produce negative impact on group working.

1.6 Team leadership

Leadership is 'the process of influencing the activities of an organised group toward goal achievement [Rauch & Behling, 1984]' (G Yukl, 2006) which is very important in our life. Strong leadership can make a country become more powerful, make a business more successful and make a team more efficient. There are two different types of leadership, people oriented and task oriented that will be used depend on different situation. For example, people oriented leadership always apply in the large organization or government, because in this particular circumstance, relationship with people is important in order to achieve long term objectives. However, task should be taken in first place in term of project, because the lifecycle of project is short and narrower focus on aimed task. During the excise, there were 5 people in my group radio head. I was the leader of the group. As I mentioned before, as a project manager I need to more focus on task rather than with people, however I found it was very hard because in short term, we are colleague I only need to keep good relationship with other in order to make the milestone, but in long term aspect we are friend and classmate we have to build good friendship which is a "intangible asset" for example, group member A had some opinion about method planning that need long time to figure out, so I have to stop him and go alternative way. However, that cause he is not happy with my leadership and tries to challenge it. This situation might happen in my future career as well. In Chinese culture there is call "guan xi" which mean relationship. If I am a project manager or need I have to according to Gary Yukl's book leadership in organizations in 2006 'the leader defines and structures his or her own role and the role of subordinates toward attainment of task goal. Example includes criticizing poor work, emphasising definite deadline, assigning subordinate to task, maintaining definite standards of performance, asking subordinates to follow procedures, offering new approaches to problem and coordinating the activities of different subordinate.' maybe sometime all of these action will cause a bad "guan xi" with others, and bed "guan xi" might slow down the project or decision making and it is impossible to corporate with same people in the future. In my point of view it is very important to balance the task and relationship especially in Asian countries such us, China, Japanese, Korean and so on.

1.7 Conclusion

In conclusion, in term of group performance I reckon my group was successful, all group member have tried their best to play the roles in the group and made a lot of afford on making profits and meet the deadline. Although we finally failed the project, we learned many things from this exercise. First of all, we learned how to make a plan and schedule for a project. Secondly, we found the risk management is very important for project manager because as Nerd said "there is no critical path and it will always change by facing new problems". Thirdly, we understood how to define the roles in a group and be clear about responsibilities. Finally we realised that the excellent techniques of group development can lead group to achieve their goal and objectives. It was good opportunity for us to critically analyses and evaluates ourselves that can help us become more professional during operating project.

2.1 Introduction

The word 'risk event' has been defined in project risk analysis and management guide as 'an uncertainty event or set of circumstances that, should it occur, will have an effect on achievement of one or more of the project's objective' (J Bartlett, 2004, p.17). In my opinion, 'risk' is a sword with two blades. On the one hand, it is a threat for project which, might cause over budget, losing profit, project delay or low quality of product. All of these factors will decrease the satisfaction of customer or lead to total failure of project. However, on the other hand, 'risk' can bring opportunity to the project that can make positive effect on the outcome of project. For example, finish task in advance, improve process of production or create add value for product. Therefore, risk analysis and management is significant for operating a project. According to Y Chong (2000) 'risk analysis is like drawing a map of potential hazards and outlining the damage they could cause. Risk management is taking the map and deciding how to avoid the hazards.' As a project manager it is necessary to take a guess for future in order to predict potential problems and prepare a plan to avoid or against these problems. In this essay I am going to discuss the process of risk management and try to apply the process into project lifecycle in order to find out the interactions.

2.2 Risk management process

There are many different methodologies for risk management process. For example, Albert Lester (2007) divided the risk management process into five stages that were risk awareness, risk identification, risk assessment, risk evaluation and risk management. He claimed that 'The first three stages are often referred to as qualitative analysis and are by far the most importance stage of the process' (A Lester, 2007, p65, 66). Moreover, the risk management process has been developed as another five phases by John Bartlett and other authors in 2004. It includes, initiate, identity, assess, plan responses and implement response. He believes that 'the risk management process is iterative within itself, so the output from each phase might require a previous phase to be revisited' (J Bartlett, 2004, p 18). Furthermore, in my point of view, the most specific and detailed risk management process was defined by project management institute (2008). The risk manage process has been separated to six stage what consist plan risk management, identify risks, perform qualitative risk analysis, perform quantitative risk analysis, plan risk response, monitor and control risks, but there were four stage when it was first published in 1996 that were risk identification, risk qualification, risk response development and risk response control. It is easy to observe that there are some key words in all these mythologies such as 'identify', 'analysis', 'responses' and 'monitor'. Therefore, these are very important aspects during risk management process.

According to project management institute (2008), the first stage of risk management process is plan risk management which is a consideration and evaluation about the structure of the process before project planning and there are some critical things need to be considered in this stage. First of all, the approach, tools and date resource need to be chosen for managing the risks. Secondly, clarify the responsibilities for people who will be involved in this project. Thirdly, estimate the demand for resource and funds during risk management process. Fourthly, define the timing and frequency of risk management during the project lifecycle. Fifthly, category all the risk systematically and evaluate the probability and impact. Finally decide if the risk happens how to record and report it. Project management institute (2008) states that 'careful and explicit planning enhance the probability of success for the five other risk management process'. However, I reckon that it is difficult to make a risk management plan in this stage. Because all of these considerations are before planning the project, there can be some inaccurate date and uncertain information that will cause a low quality plan and waste of resources.

The second stage-identify risk is about find out the rick which will makes a impact on the project no matter it will bring a positive or negative impact, then record the characteristics in order to develop the responses. The people who are involved in the project must participate during the whole process of identify risk such us project team, stakeholders and users, because the project team there are different responsibilities for every team member so they need to clearly understand all the risks for take contingency action to them, stakeholders and user may define their tolerance and provide more objectives. In addition, the identify risk process is a continuous action during the whole project. Because the risk will appear in other stage as well, it is important to keep discover and identify new risk until the project has been completed. Furthermore, there are many tools and techniques have been mentioned by project management institute (2008) for identify risks, such as, check list analysis, documentation review, assumption analysis, SWOT analysis and so on.

The third and fourth stages are both risk analysis processes but in different ways. One of them is qualitative method which, is about analyses and evaluate the impact and probability of risk and then prioritise them. The orders are depend on probability of occurrence and how serious impact it will make to the project. People involve in the project have different responsibility and objectives, the level of risk can be seen differently by different people. Therefore it is necessary to build a system for evaluating the level of probability and impact in order to reduce the influence of bias. The quantitative analysis always after qualitative analysis, quantitative analysis is a process to numerically evaluate the impact of prioritised risk. It can analyse the risk individually or estimate the total impact of risks to the project, in addition quantitative analysis can provide date to show the difference between past and now and then it can be helpful to see is there any improvement in risk management. However sometime the quantitative analysis is not necessary to develop the responses for the risks, it is depend on the time and budget.

After the risks have been identified and analysed, the solutions and actions need to be developed to response these risk in order to avoid and reduce the negative impact or transfer to risk into opportunity, as well as prepare the contingency plan for uncertain risk, these are known as plan risk responses. In this process, the recourse should be used for the risk with high priority and a person need to be pointed for implementing the response. In addition, as a risk manage, it is important to fully understand the current situation and capability, analyse the resource and budget in order to make sure all responses are realistic and cost efficient. Moreover, develop more options for decision making and all the decision must be agreed by all people who involved in this project.

The final stage of the risk management process is monitor and control risks which are serious of actions for implementing risk response plan, tracking identified risk, monitor residual risk and discover new risks. In the monitor and control process, some of the risk has occurred or will occur but some of them will never happen, it important to keep tracking and make comparing between plan and reality, then to find out the difference and make some amendments for future responses in order to make the risk management plan better. Moreover, the monitoring and controlling of risks can provide date to evaluate the risk management process whether it is efficient or not.

The process of risk management can provide a lot of advantage for project management for example, enhance the profitability, reduce the probability of failure and discovering opportunities for project. However, there are also some limitation or weakness for the risk management process. First of all, there are some risks can be produced by the process, because all of those stages within the process are interacted with each others, if there is a mistake has been made in one of them that will cause a butterfly effect to other stage and lead the process produce inaccurate risk management plan. So in term of project management, the risk management process can be seen a risk. In addition, there are many methodologies of risk management process and they divided the process in to different number of stage, some include three or four stage and other has five or six stages. But all of those methodologies need comprehensive analysis for dates and lot of paper work that might cost a lot of time and increase the cost of project. Furthermore, Chapman and Ward (2003) mentioned that the risks are always defined as threats to the project and the risk management process is focus on remove those threats, but the opportunities which can produce positive outcome for the project might be ignored during the process.

2.3 project lifecycle

According to Chapman and ward (2003) 'an appreciation of the potential for risk management in projects has to be grounded on a clear understanding of the nature and scope of decision making involved in project management. A natural framework for examining these decisions is the project life cycle (PLC)'. The life cycle of project has been divided into different numbers of phases, Adam and Brandt (1983) introduced the life cycle as four phrases that include conceptualization, planning, execution and termination. There are many theorists support this concept such as Pinto and Selvin (1988), Cleland (1999) and Chapman and Ward (2003). In addition, Stuckebruck (1981) and Kerzner (1995) defined the project life cycle with five phases that contain conceptualization, definition, production, operational and divestment. Moreover the PMBOK 1983 divided the project life cycle more into another four phases that are feasibility, acquisition, operational and disposal (J Wu, D Leifer, 2006). There is no right or wrong for these theories, they described and explained the project life cycle in different way. I would like to use the theory developed by Chapman and Ward in 2003 to discuss the interaction between project life cycle and risk management process, because Chapman and Ward broke down the four phases more specifically into eight stages in order to find the source of uncertainty and facilitating the management.

According to Chapman and Ward (2003), the conceptualization phase has been developed to conceive stage. The initial objectives need to be defined in this stage that mean to think about what is going to produce and what benefit can be earn by delivery the product. The objective in this stage is not a clear plan but a vague idea about the concept and purpose. The stakeholders should be involved in this stage, because they will provide different views about the objective and the consensus need to be made for continue this project if there is someone not agree the objective, the project might be suspended or terminated. Therefore the sufficient support and resource allocation for the idea must be obtained in order to take further consideration and refine the objective. During the conceptualization phase, the plan risk management stage for risk management process need to take place as well in order to prepare the further risk management and also help the stakeholder to do decision making for whether continue this project or not.

The second phase is planning which was divided into design stage, plan stage and allocate stage by Chapman and Ward (2003) in this stage, the basic design take place at a strategic level in order to find out what need to do for achieve the objectives as well as build a criteria for evaluating and developing the current design. When the design stage has been complete the project will move to the second stage-the plan stage. The resource based plan need to be produced in order to show the resource requirement, length of period and how design will be excited. In addition, more people and organisation will be involved for develop the targets and milestone need to be developed. The third stage for planning is allocate stage which is making decision for involved parties and individual and allocating the responsibilities and task between them. Compare to the former stage the allocation need to be more detail for the internal resources and contracts. In my opinion, the planning is the most important phase for risk management and most of stages from risk management process take place in this phase such as identifying risk, qualitative and quantitative analysis, risk plan response. The resource and time are limited to the project, so it is necessary to define and analyse the risk during planning stage as well as develop the responses for those risk. If the risks have not been discovered in this phase, it will be cost a lot of time and resources to respond the risks in later phase.

After the whole planning phase has been completed, the project will forward to execution phase or execute stage. This stage is about implementing and realise the plan which was produced in previous phase. In addition, monitoring the process of production, also make adjustment to budget, schedule and resource allocation. In term of risk management, it is important to tracking the identified risk and monitoring residual risks. The contingency decision need to be made when the new risks have been discovered and identified and then take appropriate contingency action to dealing with those risks.

The finally phase in project lifecycle is termination as Chapman and Ward (2003) mentioned which consist three stages, deliver, review and support. The deliver stage is about verifying the project performance and comparing the actual performance with designed performance and objectives. After the verification and comparison there is a review stage in order to audit the whole process of project management. In the auditing many problems might be found that need to be recorded and make sure it will not happen again in the future. The final stage is support stage which is about 'basic maintenance and liability perception development of support evaluation' (Chapman and ward 2007). The evaluation and review for the risk management process will happen in the termination phase in order to verify the efficiency of the process.

2.4 Conclusion

In conclusion, there are many methodologies of risk management process have been introduced this essay and different theorist divided the risk management process into different stage. In this essay, the process has been divided into six stages what include plan risk management, indentify risk, perform qualitative risk analysis, perform quantitative risk analysis, plan risk response and monitor and control risks. The theory has been used in this essay about the risk management process was developed by project management institute (2008). One the other hand the risk management process can reduce the risk in and increase the probability of achievement for the project. But in another and hand there are some limitations and weaknesses of the current risk management process. Therefore, the methodology need to be continuously modified and developed in order to provide better performance for risk management. In addition, the project lifecycle has been introduced and discussed in the later part of this essay. There are also many theorists held different view about the phase of project lifecycle. The four phase project lifecycle has been used in this essay which developed by Chapman and Ward (2003). It includes, conceptualisation, planning execution and termination. Furthermore, the risk management has been applied in to project lifecycle and critically discussed the interaction and relationship between them.