BUS477

An example Team Charter and a Weekly Team Update follow. 

Please submit your charter, weekly updates and any general questions about your teams on the Class Discussion Forum under Teams.

Course Title:  BUS477

Instructor:  Ean Jackson

Team Members:  John Smith (BUS477), Belinda Chan (BUS477),  Punkaj Singh (ENSC201), Sandy Jones (ENSC201) etc. 

Team Member Skill Inventory
(Areas individual members can contribute/want to develop)

John will contribute his skill as a leader by being our Team Leader, organizing us; keeping us on track, leading meetings, and helping all of us contribute. He will help to do any specific research we may need as a team. He is good at research, organization, and time management. he is task oriented, and has access to Windows and Mac os systems and likes doing publications. He is very good at Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.

Belinda will act as our team secretary, take notes at meetings, and communicate those notes via the team newsgroup and via email. She likes to help and try new ways of doing things. Her Internet research skills will come in handy to our team.

Punkaj will contribute via his writing skills and his determination. He will serve as our Instructor/student liaison and contribute to our written work.

Sandy will contribute via his technical skills and his access to a computer and software to match those required by the school. and can create audio presentations, video, websites, PowerPoint presentations, or whatever other technological skills may be necessary in completing any of our assignments.

Learning Team Goals

(May include project assignment goals, group process goals, quality level goals, etc.)
1. Every Team Member in our team receives an A on all of our Team projects/worksheets.
2. Our group work will be a wonderful collaboration of all of our collective points of view and personalities and we fully expect to attain our goal of no less than 95% of possible points on our Team work.
3. Every Team member will do their share and take responsibility for what they have agreed to do.
4. Every Team member will attend our Team meetings. In the event that this is not possible, a team member will give at least 24 hours notice to our team leader, and arrange to receive assignments from the Team offline, online, by email, or by phone.

What are potential barriers to the achievement of these goals?

The barriers we may have in accomplishing what we design to accomplish are the following:

Communication barriers – due to the nature of our class design and obligations, we do not always all communicate online at the same time. We also experience different communication styles, written or oral, which may inhibit our being able to understand each other clearly, or having our ideas and thoughts expressed at all. The asynchronous nature of our communication may make it difficult to schedule face-to-face meetings as well.

Scheduling – all of us, all of our Team, have lives and families and work which need our attention. All of us would describe our lives as “full.” Given that our lives are full, we may experience difficulty scheduling our meetings and our assignments.
Our strategy for overcoming this will be to set “by when” times clearly before each assignment, and give a little extra time in each “by when” for those who may need a little extra time.

Geographic barriers – All of us live in different areas. Some of us may have to drive farther than others, but we are all in agreement that we will utilize the Internet technology and the Burnaby campus as our meeting ground and that the facility will provide us with the things we may need to succeed as a Team.

Ground Rules

Meeting schedule, locations, attendance expectations, agenda, assignment completion, communication methods, etc.
We have agreed to meet via Microsoft Live Meeting 5 times. For those that cannot be there, they will participate via instant messenger, or after the fact via email. We also have agreed to keep in contact with each other throughout the week before a meeting via email and phone calls to make sure that we will be prepared to meet. If needed, we will hold a meeting before the last day of class.
If a team member is going to be late or leave early, he or she needs to let the team know. Our meetings will have an agenda that will be communicated via email before our meeting and summarized at the conclusion of our meeting. All Team members will be given a summary of each meeting via email, which will include topics discussed, assignments given, and processes to be implemented. We will keep comments brief, keep the unnecessary details out of our communication, and keep in mind that there are other people there other than us.
It is the responsibility of our Team leader to make sure that everyone has the chance to speak. It is also his or her responsibility to make sure that everyone stays on track of where the meeting should be going.
We will actively listen and comment on each person’s ideas and opinions in order to come to the best results. Belinda will summarize each members comments for the group, then make sure that everyone has a copy of those notes. Our Team leader will go around the group and ask for comments from each person also emails of encouragement to input their ideas, comments.
At the beginning of each meeting we will be reminded to be respectful everyone’s opinion, as each person’s opinion is important and everyone has the right to have his or her opinion heard.
We will also agree not to interrupt the speaker. Each Team member will do his or her best to contribute and listen respectfully during our meetings and to avoid interrupting. We will communicate throughout the course by email, newsgroup postings, and phone calls.

We expect that everyone participates and follows through with their assignments and responsibilities.

We will communicate assignments a minimum of one week in advance and assignments will be clearly described. We agree to be understanding, courteous, and flexible with each other.
Team members will be assigned to help other team members to ensure all questions are answered. Punkaj will be designated as the liaison for information, and we will all go to them for answers to our Team related questions.

It is expected that all team members complete their part on time so that the team member responsible for turning it in is able to do so in a timely matter. We will trust in each member of the team to do his or her part.
Due dates that the team has set are posted in our weekly Team update, are generally Mondays, and if parts are not completed and we are not able to get in contact with that individual then the team leader will appoint backups to accomplish the task needed.

As a team, we all will be prepared to help each other. Moreover, each person is responsible for his or her own actions.

During our brainstorm sessions there will be no critique. ALL ideas will be respected and accepted for the storm phase. After the storming session, when it comes to choosing the Team direction, we will have a majority vote for which direction to take.
We will use email or face-to-face meetings to collaborate in our writing and assignments.
Phone numbers are not to be shared with anyone out side the team.

If we decide to change this document, the changes will be voted on and if there is a majority for the proposed changes, we keep the changes and post them as comments. If someone wants to make a change, they will write the change and submit it to the team leader for dissemination and an approval vote.
If someone does not understand what the change is or what it is for, clarification will be sought quickly from the individual that requested the change.
We will use email and/or the BUS477 Team forum as our center of communication and information. We are a larger team so just make sure that no one is left out and that everyone is involved. We will stay together and will succeed.

Conflict Management

What are potential conflicts that might arise among or between team members during this course? How will team members deal with these and other conflicts?
One of the problems we may experience is a learning curve with the technology.  It may occur that we do not all know how to use the Live Meeting program.  Pankaj will be on call for everyone that has questions about how the it works. Sandy can more than likely help also.

All of us could use a little more focus and could do better at being punctual. We will manage this by being generous and kind with each other if problems arise.
We accommodate each other and it has worked very well so far. We accommodate people for meetings by making the meeting accessible by phone or MSN.

If there is a problem with a team member not completing his or her assignment we will:

1. Be open and flexible with other team members, and gently reminding them of what they said they were going to do.
2. Be accommodating in our approach to collaboration.
3. We confront the team member privately, having our team leader do the confronting.
4. We ask our instructor to get involved.
5. As a last resort, we ask our Team member to resign from the team or we will forcibly dismiss them from the Team.

Example Weekly Team Update

Team Members:  John Smith (BUS477), Belinda Chan (BUS477),  Punkaj Singh (ENSC201), Sandy Jones (ENSC201) etc.

Meeting time/location:  We met online on Sunday 15 September at 20:30.  John, Belinda and Pankaj attended.  Sandy was absent.

Minutes:

• discussed team charter (10 mins)
• discussed and agreed on roles we would play within business, our titles (15 mins)
• reviewed idea.  discussed competition.  (20 mins)
• discussed development costs and operational timeframes (15 mins)

• agreed to meet on Tuesday 17 September at pub for an hour
• Pankaj to identify top 10 direct/indirect competitors
• Belinda to create chart of operational phases and save on GoogleDocs