Educating Stakeholders on Multidisciplinary Teams

¶ … Educating Stakeholders on Multidisciplinary Teams

Implementing Multidisciplinary Teams: Educating the Stakeholders

Why Create Multidisciplinary Teams

Illustrate the linear project approach: the waterfall effect:

specialized disciplines would create specific deliverables pass them off to the next discipline

Web site creation example:

interface designers would hand off low fidelity schematics to visual designers,

Visual designers would design the look and feel before delivering to web developers.

Illustrate the Multidisciplinary approach:

team is created with members from different disciplines and expertise

The team collaborates on a goal-based project

The team takes ownership of the project

Pro and Con:

Linear approaches lead to:

slow feedback from stakeholders lack of ownership by the team no interest invested team members have no stake innovation is not encouraged no pride in work may result in lower quality

Multidisciplinary approaches lead to:

Team effort creates good atmosphere

Team members care about the project, because it is theirs

The goal base project is satisfying

Results in a complete product

Problems easier to track

Implementation:

Define the project

Include as many details as possible good exercise here is to give each outside stakeholder a simulated project to briefly describe

Then have a brainstorming session to critique each description

Brainstorm a separate simulated project together as a team

Share impressions of what was learned

Select the team

The definition should include description of tasks which will match types of team members needed

Meet with the team to share project definition

Immediate feedback is exchanged and team members become stakeholders also Define deliverables and timeframe

What will be the results?

What are the various stages?

How can we track progress?

Who will be responsible for what?

How will outside stakeholders be involved?

A regular meetings?

A always available?

A part of the team on a regular basis?

To make this work well, the stakeholders need to identify their own work and management style

An activity where stakeholders create a checklist to identify their work and management styles

Ask them questions to see if they listed everything

Troubleshooting

Identify all the participants and their expertise

Share communications information

Identify the responsibilities of each member