Group Divided Work Among Members

¶ … group divided work among members by mutual agreement. That is the best way to divide tasks, because it is fairer to everyone and allows each person to discuss what he or she is best at. Some people are good at one part of the project, while others are good at different things. Since each member of the group attended all webinars and related discussions, each member had the same information. That made things move more smoothly, because team members did not have to stop and play "catch up" because they had missed valuable information. However, a division of work was still necessary when it came to the actual work and the creation of the project. A team leader was elected, and then the team talked about what strengths and weaknesses they had. From that point, work could be assigned to each member of the team that would allow each member to do a fair share. All of the work could then be put together and edited by the team leader, making everything cohesive. The contribution of each person was very important.

There was communication throughout the process. To communicate effectively, the group scheduled regular meetings and progress reports. It does no good to assign work and a due date, and then not talk about that work anymore until the due date arrives. If someone does not do his or her fair share of the work, that person could end up bringing down the entire team and making a lot more work for everyone if the problem is not discovered until the work is due. By having regular meetings and progress updates, and by setting an early due date for the work based on the actual due date of the project, the team was able to move through the process of completing the project without any kind of delay or due date problems. That provided a good safety net for all the team members, which is very beneficial when a person has to work in a group and rely to a certain extent on the abilities and work ethic of others.

The group process was very effective. That was a great thing for all of the group members and it helped the project turn out very well. If only one person had tried to do most of the work, it does not seem as though that person would have had the needed skills to do everything just right. When a group is made up of people who have all kinds of different skills, it is easy to see how that would be beneficial to the group. It makes everything go more quickly and smoothly, and it also brings a lot of value to the finished product that is created by the group. There is more to it than just that, however, because having an effective work group means that each person in that group was able to communicate with others properly about what he or she could contribute. By working together, it became much easier to create a group process in which everyone was able to play to their strengths.