Reflective Essay: Teamwork, Project Management, and App Development

This reflective essay analyzes the student's experience in developing a mobile application for an insurance company, focusing on teamwork, project management, and leadership. The essay details the strategies employed for team formation, including the selection of members based on skills, competencies, and personality traits, as well as the importance of communication methods. It discusses the challenges encountered, such as time constraints, the need for a multi-disciplinary team, and the loss of a key team member. The student reflects on the positive aspects of the project, highlighting the team's support and dedication, while also acknowledging areas for improvement in future projects, such as increasing project duration and refining team selection. The essay also reflects on project management aspects, including challenges in ensuring a common understanding among team members with diverse backgrounds and expertise. The student's experience provides valuable insights into the practical application of teamwork and project management principles in a real-world setting.

Running head: REFLECTIVE ESSAY
Reflective Essay
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1REFLECTIVE ESSAY
Introduction
The aim of the study is to reflect upon the actions and strategies that have been utilized to
form and develop a team and maintain the performance of the project while conducting the
project on the development of the mobile application for Insurance Company. The activity
engaged within the planning, development and implementation of the project provided
several learning outcomes and experiences which this study would aim to reflect upon. This
approach can help to identify key learning experiences and develop knowledge from them
which can help in future professional growth and increase competency to address challenges
in further professional work (Costa et al. 2015; Salas et al. 2017).
Discussion
Teamwork essay
While engaging in the independent project in which I had to develop a mobile applications
for customers related to medical insurance related information, I had to engage in several
activities to promote and maintain teamwork (Schoutenet al. 2016). Outlined below is the
reflection those activities and what I felt about those activities.
 In order to form my team I had to keep in mind several aspects that are related to
efficient teamwork and performance. I knew that just hiring skilled members is not
enough to achieve best outcomes but that forms that foundation on which a strong
team can be built. While hiring the members and forming the team, I focused on the
key skills and competencies of the member and engaged in face to face interviews and
practical demonstrations sessions through which I could evaluate the skill levels and
the competencies of each applicant as well as their attitudes, personality and
professional aptitudes. Selection of the team members was based on how well they

2REFLECTIVE ESSAY
skills and competencies aligned with the needs of the project in terms of their
understanding of the technologies related with the project and the concepts related to
the product which includes health insurance related information. More over attributes
such as experience, technical understanding as well as knowledge in App design and
programming were taken as additional factors for the selection of the most suitable
members for the team (Sonnenmeier et al. 2016).
 In order to find the team members, I had to focus on certain important criteria such as
the level of knowledge and expertise of the candidates, their previous experience and
exposures, team working and team coordination abilities, analytical skills, critical
thinking skills, innovativeness and creativity, consistency and dedication. According
to Abreu et al. (2016) and Fidalgo-Blanco et al.(2015), these factors are necessary in
order to develop an efficient and strong team and therefore ensure best outcomes in
team performance. Thus I focused on the selection of the members based on these
criteria as it would help me to independently select members having the most
appropriate sets of competencies and skills from the available candidates instead of
depending on the forum to find the members which can be time consuming in terms
of creating a specific workforce. Factors such as relevant knowledge and prior
experience ensured that the members have the skills to understand the requirements of
the project both in technical and non-technical term and are able to develop an App
which addresses the quality standards, technical standards, and customer expectations.
 As discussed above, I resorted to developing my own team for the preparation of the
App. This was mainly because I wanted to select the members personally from my
own understanding so that I can have the best approaches to manage the team.
Additionally, the project itself required diverse set of skills and competencies to
develop the app effectively considering various factors, technical and non-technical.

3REFLECTIVE ESSAY
Due to this I did not feel comfortable depending on anyone else or the selection of the
members apart from the preliminary round. I liked forming the team delegating tasks
and responsibilities to the ley leaders within the project whom I personally know and
selected for the purpose of the team. It has been suggested that forming a team
requires a personal approach especially for short terms projects whose effectiveness is
based on the immediate team performances and outcomes and implies the necessity of
the manager or project leader to select the members who would require minimal
training to understand and start working on the project (Vertesi 2019).
 In the project I was also integrally involved as a member helping in the coordination
of team activates and tasks as well as monitoring them and providing strategic
direction. This significantly added value to the final project through my skilled
insights that helped to project more convenient, user friendly, fast and appropriate.
The involvement of the multi-disciplinary team with various skills and competencies
and the efficient team working capabilities of the members have helped to achieve the
optimal quality of the product. This would not have been possible if I was working
solos. Since the selection of the team was done personally by me, I ensured that the
personalities and attitudes align with the business and team performance objectives
and expectations. This ensured that personality issues or non-participation of team
members did not occur which was also contributed by the fact that the project was
short term and high paid. Moreover, the tasks were evenly distributed among the
members thereby preventing any one member from getting over burdened with work
(Valentine et al. 2015).
 In order to maintain best performance, within a team it is important to have redundant
modes of communication and also ensure that the communication is open, bi
directional and clear. This can help to promote better coordination with the team

4REFLECTIVE ESSAY
through efficient sharing of information, knowledge, knowhow and technical
expertise. In my team, multiple approaches were used for communication between
team members depending on the urgency and the context of the message as well as
the scenario. These approaches included face to meetings while in the workplace to
discuss important project related milestones and updates and also for urgent business
meetings. Using emails for reminders and updates for lesser urgent information was
also used by my team. This also allowed leaving a trail of document for reviewing the
conversation later on. Additionally, Skype and other video calling platforms were also
used for long distance communication and meeting with members and external
consultants in different geographical locations. Out of these methods, I believe the
fact to face interviews were to be most effective because it allowed individuals to
effectively communicate using body language as well. The video conferencing option
by Skype or other platforms also provided similar opportunities over a long distance
when face to face interviews were not possible (Salmon et al. 2017).
 Overall my experience working with the team was amazing and the members were
not only supportive but came up with their own ideas and solution a way that
supported better performance within the team. I got to learn a lot of things on how to
effectively manage the team as well as how to maintain best communication and team
work. I often had team building activities within my team and had many quality times
while having breaks with the team. These were few of the best experiences I had
while working with this team. The project was done for a comparatively shorter time
frame due to which the engagement of the team members within the team was for a
limited duration which led to a sense of disappointment after the completion of the
project as each member developed a sense of belongingness to this team and a
positive teamwork. During the progress of the project one of the members had to

5REFLECTIVE ESSAY
leave due to a medical emergency that he has met. This was a great loss for the team
as the member was one of the key leaders. Finding a replacement as good as him was
an ugly experience and additional time loss (Vertesi 2019).
 Some of the key challenges that I faced while with the team included the limited time
within which the project had to be completed which created a sense of stress among
the members to get the milestone completed in a timely basis. The multi-disciplinary
team with different members having different skillsets also created its own challenge
while collaborating with them and ensuring that everyone understands concepts.
Additionally due to the diverse skillsets of the workforce as well as the levels of the
expertise each member had, a lot of ideas were constantly being generated. However,
it was not possible to utilize all of them and several good ides ended up being unused.
 For future teamwork ad projects I would like to continue with the idea of selecting
and developing my own team for best outcomes. However, I would also focus on
increasing the time for the project in order to give a more elaborate approach for the
development of the team (Schouten et al. 2016).
Project essay
While managing the project, the activities and approach that are utilized is being reflected
upon as below:
 While working on the project, to develop the mobile App, my overall experience was
very positive and I had very few negative experiences. The support of the members of
the team, their dedication toward the millstones and objectives and their ability to
over achieve their expectations to prepare exemplary product design and implement it
in the prototype has been a vital learning experience for me as well as a project leader
as well as a member. The good experiences have further been increased by the strong,

6REFLECTIVE ESSAY
professional and inter personal skills of the employees and their ability to support
each other as a group. The only bad experience I had was the shortage of time while
working on the project as well as certain technical challenges that came up once in a
while integrating the various part of the design into the overall prototype. The one
ugly experience that I had to face was while looking for a placement member for the
team after an existing member had to leave for a personal emergency. As the leader of
the team was absent there was a relative backdrop in the members of the particular
team. They were highly motivated by the energy and details with which their leader
took his job. Finding a replacement that could fit those criteria and fulfill the roles of
the team leader was difficult (Costa et al. 2015).
 Some of the key challenges that I faced while completing the project included the
increased in work pressure on the members because of the time constraint due which
several activities needed to be done simultaneously which increased the management
workload as well and created confusions within the team. Finding members with all
the pre requisite knowledge for the project was another challenge because of the
diverse nature of expertise and knowledge needed for this project. After one of the
members who was leading an important activity of Research and development for the
App had to leave due to medical emergency, it left a vacuum in performance and
started to impact the research and development activities in the project and managing
the team became a significant management issue intermittently. While outlining the
project outcomes a key challenge that was faced by me was to ensure that the
members from various technical and knowledge backgrounds are able to understand
and be on the same page for the project outcomes. Since the project had a very diverse
requirement, its objectives had to be understood by all the members to have an overall
understanding of the project requirement. Due to this it was vital that the members ha

7REFLECTIVE ESSAY
to undergo a general training to develop a common understanding of the project and
start their engagement with it which was also a time consuming and cost intensive
factor (Sonnenmeier et al. 2016).
 These areas were specifically challenging because it affected the starting of the
project and also the performance of the team and ability to achieve the milestone son
time. The budget allocation for the project was also restricted to take several activities
for team orientation and skills development. This was a key challenge as it led to the
project being delivered at a slower tine. Hiring a new leader for the team in the middle
of the project was the most challenging aspect as the individual had to be brought in
terms and updated on the progress of the project through retraining programs which
further increased the project costs.
 In order to ensure successful completion of the project on a timely basis in would
focus on providing more time for the teams to develop coordination and therefore
optimize their team performance to achieve the key milestones and deliver product on
a timely basis. Moreover, I would also focus of increasing the budget for training and
orientation of the members before starting the project to ensure the best outcomes. In
addition I would also plan for a reserve workforce and parallel skills development for
members to take up leadership positions to address unseen and unplanned attrition
(Vertesi 2019).
Conclusion
From the above reflection, I could understand that my overall experience with the project had
been positive and I enjoyed working with the team and managing the project. The experience
made me a better sector of team and increased my confidence in managing a multi-
disciplinary workforce to achieve the team objectives. The team was able to develop the App
successfully which was tested and found to be effective thereby showing the tam to be high

8REFLECTIVE ESSAY
efficient at its work. However there were certain delays in the product delivery which can be
overcome in future projects. I learnt from the challenges I faced during the project that
through more patience and persverence better outcomes for the team can be developed.

9REFLECTIVE ESSAY
References:
Costa, P.L., Passos, A.M. and Bakker, A.B., 2015. Direct and contextual influence of team
conflict on team resources, team work engagement, and team performance. Negotiation and
Conflict Management Research, 8(4), pp.211-227.
Salas, E., Prince, C., Baker, D.P. and Shrestha, L., 2017. Situation awareness in team
performance: Implications for measurement and training. In Situational Awareness (pp. 63-
76). Routledge.
Schouten, A.P., van den Hooff, B. and Feldberg, F., 2016. Virtual team work: Group decision
making in 3D virtual environments. Communication Research, 43(2), pp.180-210.
Sonnenmeier, R., Kurtz, A., Humphreys, B. and Russell, S., 2016. Improving Effective
Interdisciplinary Team Work Using Team-Based Learning within the NH-ME LEND
Curriculum: Evaluation from Year 2.
Abreu, S., Caldeira, A., Costa, A.R., Gomes, T. and Roque, L.A., 2016, October.
Interdisciplinary team work applying working methods to a math project. In 2016 2nd
International Conference of the Portuguese Society for Engineering Education
(CISPEE) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
Fidalgo-Blanco, Á., Sein-Echaluce, M.L., García-Peñalvo, F.J. and Conde, M.Á., 2015.
Using Learning Analytics to improve teamwork assessment. Computers in Human
Behavior, 47, pp.149-156.
Vertesi, J., 2019, March. Seeing Like a Rover: Team Work and Human-Robot Relations.
In 2019 14th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) (pp.
152-152). IEEE.

10REFLECTIVE ESSAY
Valentine, M.A., Nembhard, I.M. and Edmondson, A.C., 2015. Measuring teamwork in
health care settings: a review of survey instruments. Medical care, 53(4), pp.e16-e30.
Salmon, P.M., Stanton, N.A. and Jenkins, D.P., 2017. Distributed situation awareness:
Theory, measurement and application to teamwork. CRC Press.