Effective Teamwork Strategies: Approaches, Communication, and Stakeholder Management

In this project report we will discuss about team work and below are the summaries point:- The team follows a systematic approach to team work, involving stakeholder identification, goal setting, and project planning. The team utilizes a hierarchical structure with project owners, sponsors, team leaders, and members, communicating through various channels. Effective communication, understanding, and addressing issues promptly are essential for successful teamwork.

INDIVIDUAL WORK
RAJIV REDDY AVUTHU
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL LANCASHIRE

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Table of Contents
Team work...........................................................................................................................2
Strengths and weaknesses of team’s approach to team work..........................................3
Techniques that could have been used.............................................................................5
User stories..........................................................................................................................5
Advantages and disadvantages of agile technique of writing user stories.......................5
Stakeholders.........................................................................................................................7
Strengths and weaknesses of the stakeholders and communication plan........................8
References:........................................................................................................................10

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Team work
The team has undergone various steps. This includes identifying and meeting various
stakeholders. Then various goals are set and prioritized. This must be outlining the needs of
stakeholders, make them prioritized and set particular goals of projects. Next, various
deliverables are defined. After that project schedules are created. Then issues are identified and
risk analysis is to be completed. Lastly, the project plan are presented to the stakeholders. To
develop the codes for “Go Home Well”, it is to be decided what is to be made. Then a text editor
is to be set up. Then, there must be the design phase. This deals with looks and appearances,
features that it has included and the ways in which the user can interact with that. Then, the code
is to be planned and a schedule is to be formulated.
We have gained better experiences from the team activities as it is explicitly decided to
go on approach at first. Here, hierarchical team is to be set up. At the top there is project owner.
He is involved in selecting, promoting and eradicating team members. Then, there is project
sponsor. His team role lies in reviewing the future problems regarding the project. At the lower
level there are team members, team leaders and project managers. Their tasks primarily rely on
project sponsors and owners (Aga, Noorderhaven & Vallejo, 2016). All of them would be
working individually. However the team members would be small group. The communications
among them would be done through face to face meetings, video conferencing, webinars and
stand up presentations. The shared tools to be used are bug tracking, budget management, file
sharing and collaboration. The meetings and the schedule tasks are to be arranged through
percentage tracking, project planning, Gantt Chart. Apart from this, for communication the
individuals involved in the project must seek to understand and look beyond the individual

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triggers. Further, they must be looking for similarities and not differences and consider the
liabilities of the feelings and commitments (Lindsjørn et al., 2016). However, as anyone is not
working properly the undesirable ones in the group are to be determined. Immediate actions must
be taken and planning must be made for ahead and set the ground rules and the communications
are to be documented and it must be sorted through mouth.
The project has comprised of an efficient background. This includes the planning of
stakeholder communication, creating user stories, scheduling of production, and creating agendas
of team meeting and summary of communication. The team meeting agendas are prioritized
through the MoSCoW techniques. Apart from this various software tools used are the Whatsapp
and Microsoft teams.
Strengths and weaknesses of team’s approach to team work
Strengths
Teamwork has been executed effectively by us and we were able to accomplish the goal
that was set and complete the entire project faster than anyone of us would have done it
individually. The members present in our team had applied their own unique skills they were
able to come up with an effective solution (Talman, 2018). For example a team member had
good coding skills, and another member had designing skills, these members with the help of
other respective members had designed the application as well as implemented the coding in
order to run it. The teamwork has helped us to encourage each other and provide mutual support,
this provided us the benefit of achieving the project goals which was not possible to achieve
individually (Sedaghat, 2018). Our team work has allowed us to achieve these goals because all
the individual members had worked attentively and together. We had put thoughts of our own
accomplishments aside in order to work for the benefit of the entire team.

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Some strength that were provided to us with the usage of effective teamwork are as
follows
Outcome: teamwork has helped us in achieving better outcomes in the project because
the team has helped us in getting hold of more resources to bear against any challenge, we were
also provide the benefit of better oversight in order to reduce risk of bad individual contributions
(Aga, Noorderhaven & Vallejo, 2016). For example in this project, teamwork has helped us in
getting more ideas on how the application can be made effective for the users so that they reach
home safely even if they have high alcohol intake.
Efficiency: previously few members of the team were absent and hence one if the
members had to start with the project individually, but it had been very difficult, after all the
members were available the project was able to proceed effectively (Harrison & Lock, 2017).
This helped us to realize that the approach to teamwork has helped us in increasing the efficiency
of the project.
Ideas: our team had diverse members who had unique skills, when the members have
applied their own skills in respective fields we were able to come up with an effective solution
(Lindsjørn, Sjøberg & Dingsøyr, 2016). For example we were confused regarding various
designed for the application, the member who was an expert or had good skills for designing had
helped us making a new design by collaborating various features of different designs.
Weaknesses
Some weaknesses that we had to go through during the team’s approach to team work in
the project are as follows
Teams do not always want to get in: we were divided into groups for the purpose of
execution of the project, among these groups there have been some members who were assigned

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or supposed to work in a specific team but they did not want to be a part of that team due to some
reasons like personal grudges, no friends in the team, unknown people in the team and some
more.
Techniques that could have been used
Some techniques that could have been used in order to maintain a good approach to team
work include building up trust as well as respect, the team members must have been allowed
with enough time to build up trust and respect for each other, this would have resulted in better
coordination among them and helped us in executing the project without any issues. Clearly
outlining roles and responsibilities for the members is another step that must have been
undertaken (Aga, Noorderhaven & Vallejo, 2016). Diving individual roles as well as
responsibilities to every member would have helped in providing every member a chance to
prove themselves by performing and then good performers can be rewarded using various ways.
User stories
Advantages and disadvantages of agile technique of writing user stories
The various acceptance criteria for the project is needed to be understood first. They are
highlighted below.
Setting the level of client’s expectations:
Through setting various clearly defined set of acceptance criteria the client’s expectation
levels can be set and has laid the ground activities of the view point of the end product
(Tosuntaş, Karadağ & Orhan, 2015).
Making difference between where the clients has been paying for the deliverables and project
phase completion:

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They are used for the projects where the projects has been paying for the deliverables and
finishing the phase of the projects.

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Avoiding the miscommunication on the internal projects:
As the clients are internal, one can avoid the miscommunication and political
maneuvering through developing the clearly set of various types of acceptance criteria (Szilard et
al., 2016).
Besides, the acceptance criteria must be including various user stories. They are
demonstrated below.
User stories Priorities
The user might need to understand that the percentage of alcohol
drinking percentage of every drink. This priority will be helpful to
consume the liquid accordingly and helpful to undertake secured driving.
Medium
The user might intent the data of the content within alcohol. This can
useful for him to understand how much it has been affecting the body
High
The application can also help the user to understand the details of the
alcohol and condition of the health. This would be helpful to understand
that they are ready to drive
Medium.
Advantages
Using agile techniques for the purpose of creating user stories has helps us in numerous
ways that include acceptance criteria, user stories have helped us to have one hand on various
wants, needs as well as values of the customers who would utilize the application. It has also
helped us in concentrating on the activities that we need to accomplish in order to provide that
particular value (Inayat, Salim & Marczak, 2015). The link that pairs the two factors includes

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acceptance criteria. Acceptance criteria can be defined as conditions of satisfaction. They had
provided us with a detailed scope of the requirements of the user. They have helped us in
understanding the value of the stories and the setting expectations as to the time when we would
consider in something. The agile technique has helped us in setting the goal of acceptance
criteria, the criteria included the clarification of what we should build before we start working on
the project, ensure that everyone has common understanding of the issue or needs of the
customers, it has also allowed us in helping each others to know when a specific user story is
complete and to help verify the story with the use of automated tests.
An example of a user story is “As a user I want to know the alcohol content percentage of
each drink so that I will consume accordingly and will be useful for safe driving.”
On the basis of stories we were successful in setting the acceptance criteria that included
the points like user cannot submit the form without filling out the mandatory fields like first
name, last name, email address, billing information and many more (Paasivaara, Blincoe &
Lassenius, 2015).
Disadvantage
Usage of agile techniques for creating user stories has resulted in various disadvantages
for the project, these disadvantages include details, the usage of agile technology had provided us
with detailed explanation on the user stories, and this had distracted the team as well as our
attention and created a risk of missing a vital part of the conversion (Dingsøyr, Dybå & Gjertsen,
2019). Too much f generics is one more disadvantage which created problems for the project by
extracting functions in a specific set of iterations. Too much formality is one more disadvantage
which has distracted from users as well as lessened the readability of description. Usage of
technical parameters were masked in various user stories had listed various technical tasks

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instead of the user history; this contributes in burning the prioritization of tasks (Dhir, Kumar &
Singh, 2019).
Stakeholders
While communicating with stakeholders it is to be reminded that they are all busy people.
To make effective communication with them, the following stages are followed.
 Understanding the reason why stakeholders involved are vital.
 Getting support from the stakeholders.
 Educating senior managers.
 They should be flexible.
 Getting prepared to various tasks with representatives of stakeholders (Bourne,
2015).

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Strengths and weaknesses of the stakeholders and communication plan
Strength and weaknesses of stakeholders
Anticipating potential problems: the stakeholders of this project have helped us in
anticipating various things that might fail or go wrong. The stakeholders were from various
backgrounds as well as levels of experience which has helped us in seeing a bigger picture. In
this list of stakeholders the disadvantage provided them is that there has been time when
stakeholders were focused on their interests (Harrison & Lock, 2017). This has not been
exclusive for the external stakeholders involved. One of the stakeholders among the stakeholder
group was an inexperienced investor who voted against the proposal because he feared in losing
his money; he had focused on his own financial needs and not in the needs of the entire project
(Eskerod & Jepsen, 2016). Blocking progress was also a disadvantage that was faced by the
project because they feared in harming their own interests.
Strength and weakness of the communication plan
Some strengths of the communication plan used by the stakeholder include weekly
meeting, weekly meetings have helped the product owner in getting involved in the project on
regular basis (Derakhshan, Turner & Mancini, 2019). It has helped us in collecting information
in the form of assets for carrying out the project along with the progress of the project as soon as
the work as completed. The communication plan had helped the owner to stay connected with
the project team members on regular basis through emails (Eskerod, Huemann & Savage, 2015).
Weekly meetings were initiated which would improve the communication channel between
various stakeholders and the team members. End users might be involved in the project using
various means of communication. Focus groups might be implemented in order to receive
feedbacks from the users; this would be conducted if high-fidelity prototypes are produced (Butt,

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Naaranoja & Savolainen, 2016). Student union would be made aware of the application and
might be interested in promoting it at their venues; they would not be directly involved and
would not at all be communicated with during the development phase of the project. The
communication plan would help various stakeholders to share their ideas with each other and
help us in selecting the best idea (Aaltonen & Kujala, 2016). This communication plan has
helped us measuring our strengths by determining their internal assets. Communication would
help us in coordinating for achieving their goals in the project; coordination among all the
members is maintained.
Some disadvantages of internal communication include conflict, conflict has been a
major disadvantage, and in the project some members might make use of the internal
communication as an advantage and use it in order to argue with each other or with other teams
(Aarseth, Ahola & Aaltonen, 2017).

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