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Recitation 4: Team Dysfunction

Overview

This recitation will give you the opportunity to practice and reflect on the roles you play within a team. We'll be going over common team dysfunction issues and discuss mitigation strategies.

Context

All teams are inherently dysfunctional in some sense. This is inevitable as they are made up of fallible, imperfect human beings, each with different goals and intentions. Thankfully, the causes of dysfunction are both identifiable and curable, but definitely not easy to resolve. Making a team functional and cohesive requires courage, good communication, and a strong resolve to making the team better.

Part 0: Preparation

We have pre-assigned each team to a set of roles. Have each member of the team choose a role from the options we give you.

Keep your role secret from the other groups! We will have the audience guess your roles when your team presents to the class.

Part 1: Task Planning Meeting Rehearsal (5 min)

Congratulations! Your team has been hired as software developers to work on CMU's graduate school application system. We have assigned each team to a specifc task. Each group's tasks are below. You only have to roleplay your assigned task.

As a team, research and find tools that can be used to improve your assigned system. Compare the strengths and weaknesses of the tools. At the end of this activity, your group should have agreed on a tool to use.

Be sure to also assign each member a task in order to integrate the tool into your assigned system.

Team 1

For your first assignment, you've been asked to develop a better system for handling online payments made by graduate students for their applications.

Team 2

For your first assignment, you've been asked to develop a better system for sending acceptances to accepted students.

Team 3

For your first assignment, you've been asked to develop a better system for students to log in to their application portal.

Team 4

For your first assignment, you've been asked to develop a better system for students to upload documents to their application.

Activity Notes: Each member should act as their role during the meeting. Try to fix the dysfunction presented in this meeting and reflect on how you would fix similar issues if they come up in Project 2.

Part 2: Presentations! (15 min)

Each group will present their meeting to the class (~2 minutes per presentation). The audience will then guess the roles of each of the members of the presenting group. Best group will win a prize!

Part 3: Class Discussion (15 min)

As a class, discuss the following questions:

  1. Were you able to identify the roles played by the other groups? What problems were caused by their behavior?
  2. How would you handle these dysfunctional characteristics in future situations?
  3. Can you think of mitigation strategies and solutions to avoid these problems?

Appendix A: Role Descriptions

Below a description of the roles for each number 1-7 and the behavior of each one:

  1. The Contributor: You are aiming for general team success. Ask for your team members' opinions often, actively discuss solutions with your team, and demonstrate engagement throughout the activity.

  2. The Know-It-All: You think you are extremely experienced and know how to solve all problems on your own. Act like you don't need any help and just tell your team to watch while you search for the tool. Be pushy in telling other members how to search for information about the tool and shoot other members' ideas down.

  3. The Silent One: You assume your team members know everything and don’t feel you need to say much. Pay attention to the meeting, but simply do not suggest anything. Remain passive but friendly.

  4. The Agreer: You are afraid of raising conflicts and hence decided to just go along with whatever your team decides. Agree with everything during the activity and do not question the decisions of your team.

  5. The Hitchhiker: Your goal is to do as little work as possible. Be friendly but not productive. Try to end the meeting as quickly as possible so you can slack off. Get other people to step in for you and take over your tasks. Make fake attempts to make it look like you tried to figure out the task, then pass off the work to someone else.

  6. The Flaker: You're interested in the project, but don't want to contribute more time than necessary. Actively contribute to group discussions until tasks are being assigned, then begin giving reasons why you can't contribute more (i.e. busy with interview prep, midterm, or other assignments). If asked to do something else, continue finding other excuses on why you can’t contribute.

  7. The Perfectionist: You want this project to be absolutely perfect in even the most minor details. To you, it's most important that the tool’s source code is fully readable, perfectly documented, has a large test suite, and is aesthetically pleasing, and you will argue for or against the tool based on these minor details.