Page 93 - Using MIS

Q7 How Can You Use Collaboration Tools to Manage Tasks? 61

So
what? I Could Work Faster on My Own

Since I was a kid, I have hated teams. Now, “I hate group projects.
They’re such a waste of time. It takes forever to get the team together,
and then some people don’t show up. We waste time talking about
things that don’t relate to the project. When we finally get around to
our work, no one says much worthwhile. I could work so much faster
on my own. Plus people don’t do what they say they’ll do, and either
my grade goes down or I end up doing all the work for everyone else.
Team projects just reduce us to the worst performer.”

Is that you? Is that how you view team projects? If so, is there
anything you can do about it?
You know for certain that team projects aren’t going away.
Look at your phone. Is there anything about your phone, from the
hardware to the applications to the networks that you connect
to, that was not built by a team? No. Or even most services? Your
doctor? Your dentist? Your auto repairman? All are teams. Any
job you want, at any company you want to work for, will involve Source: Ljupco Smokovski/Fotolia
teamwork; you’ll be assigned to a team before you walk in the door.
Because this is so, you know your business school is not
going to drop group projects; if anything, the further you go in
education, the more team projects you’ll have. Again, is there
anything you can do to reduce the pain?

Questions giving and receiving critical feedback in your student teams?
Why or why not?
1. Describe three jobs that do not involve teams or group work. 4. Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and SharePoint all
Do you want any of those jobs? Explain your answer. automatically create records of who did what to which
2. Consider the statement “Working in teams in school is like documents on their sites. How can you use this data to
practicing the stomach flu. When the time comes, I’ll know demonstrate the amount of work you’ve personally done (or
how to do it.” Do you believe this? What possible good can not done) on a team project?
come to you from doing group projects in school? 5. Describe a method that your professor could use to allocate
3. Both Steve Jobs (Apple cofounder) and Bill Gates (Microsoft individual grades to team projects based on the data
cofounder) were notorious for providing, at times, devastating described in question 4. In your description, use the data
critical comments of faulty team members’ work. Discuss generated by the tool (Google Drive, OneDrive, SharePoint)
the value of critical feedback to work quality. Do you practice that your team uses.

In general, one person should be made responsible for accomplishing a task. That does not
mean that the assigned person does the task; it means that he or she is responsible for ensuring
that it gets done. Finally, no benefit will come from this list unless every task has a date by which
it is to be completed. Further, team leaders need to follow up on tasks to ensure that they are
done by that date. Without accountability and follow-up, there is no task management.
As you’ll learn in your project management classes, you can add other data to the
task list. You might want to add critical resources that are required, and you might want to