Teamwork and Project Experience: Personal Reflection Essay

This essay reflects on a student's experience working in a team, emphasizing the importance of team building, leadership, and effective communication for project success. The author describes the process of selecting team members, fostering collaboration, and establishing ground rules. The essay highlights the benefits of diverse teams and the value of individual experiences in achieving a higher-quality solution. The project involved developing a mobile-based application for care insurance, and the author discusses the challenges encountered, including workload management and the need for prerequisite knowledge. The essay concludes with a discussion of the lessons learned and the author's future goals for teamwork and project management, including leveraging technology for improved communication and collaboration. The project involved the development of a mobile application for care insurance, and the author reflects on the project's challenges and successes.

Running head: TEAMWORK AND PROJECT
TEAMWORK AND PROJECT
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Teamwork essay:
The aim of this essay is to discuss the personal experience of working in a team for
the successful completion of the project. In order to develop the team, it is essential that the
team members perform their best to outperform to persons working individually in the high
pressure situations and the satiations when multiple skillsets are needed. I formed the team by
following some very important steps which centres round the process of selecting the team
members at first and then establishing leadership, establishing the relationship, fostering
teamwork and setting ground rules for the team. As the leaders I was the only responsible
person who selected the team members and then create such an ambiance where the team
members can communicate, negotiate and utilise their skills properly. Therefore I developed
my team so that it can be open about everything. I hold different team meetings several times
so that I can understand the issues in the team regarding the successful completion of the
projects and solve them without any problem and wasting much time.
For effective teamwork, selection of team members is very important because it is
the efficiency of the team member that can make my team strong in terms of knowledge as
well as resources. In that respect I selected the team members on the basis of their ability to
communicate effectively. I was seeking the members who are well organised as well as self-
disciplined and the members must be influential and resourceful individuals who will be
proactive and understand the goals of the team properly. I have selected the team members on
the basis of their skills and knowledge over certification and willing to commit their roles
properly. In addition to this I preferred the entry of the members from the different cultures
because I know that the most I will manage members from the other cultures, it will enhance
the capability of the team by increasing the diversity in the team in terms of decision making
process. This is due to the fact that the people from different culture possess different points

2TEAMWORK AND PROJECT
of view which increase the variety in the teams as well as more operation for solving any
issues.
In selecting the team members I have used the process of ‘introduce yourself’ so that
the screening process gets simplified. In this way I could understand the educational
background of the members and how much communicative they are in the team. As most of
the problems with the team relate to the members’ inability to work collaboratively in the
team framework, knowing one another before they come together to achieve the team goal is
essential (Fidalgo-Blanco et al. 2015). Through introduce yourself, the team members can
know one another initially. This makes the communication process among the members quite
easier. This process of ‘introduce yourself’ is so helpful that I as a leader can plan which
member I shall use in what position or in what section of completing project. This process
was quite helpful in my team selection process because it was transparent and much
appreciative. It later helped me to settle the gap of knowledge and team decision making. In
selecting my team members I actually followed the method of understanding course
knowledge so that achieving goals in completing project more appropriately becomes easy.
I liked the process of selecting my team because as I have full idea of project
criteria, I could identify the capable persons and took them in my group. It world have been
worse if we were assigned with the task and a number of members predetermined without
any screening process based on their capabilities. I liked the idea of selecting team members
because as it is my team and I can follow the path which I prefer and identify the methods to
be the most appropriate (Chuang, Jackson and Jiang 2016). In addition to this, by selecting
my team members and developing my team, I am able to find out the gaps and weaknesses
where I need to push and arrange resources for. Selection process of the team members also
helped me to point out the plan the process more effectively. However, I support this process
of selecting team members is also due to the fact that I can increase the diversity of the team

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as much I wish which can help me in increasing competitive advantage of my team to
complete the project.
Working as a parts of the team has definitely created value and we as a team produced
a better quality solution than working as the solo performers. We as team fostered creativity
and learning because we gained the scope for brainstorming by combining unique and
different perspectives from each and every team members. The individual experience of the
team members are completely different from one another therefore, we got maximisation of
the knowledge in or workplaces that helped us to learn new skills from one another through
collaboration (Chuang, Jackson and Jiang 2016). In addition to thesis, the team working
process has helped the team members to blend complementary strengths. Woking together
has helped the team to ensure that will have a creative thinking process and this practice
opened up the path for incorporation of new and positive ideas in the team members.
Building trust is another important aspect of working in a team (Fidalgo-Blanco et al. 2015).
We while developing plan or executing those in doing the project, have encouraged one
another to share the feeling of safety and dependability which has helped members in
building trust upon one another.
While working individually one cannot gain the competitive advantage of bring new
ideas in completing the projects in one hand nor can he or she perform better than a well
organised team. This is due to the reason because the team working capabilities teach the
persons to resolute conflicts or gap of knowledge among themselves positively. In the team,
the members come from different cultural and educational background therefore, they have
their different working styles as well as habits (Salas et al. 2015). Conflicts arise in the
teamwork situations but when the team members know that they can perform better in the
team structure, they contribute everything to make the team perform best. On the other hand
the individual performer is easy to curb as he or she does not have the capacity to face the

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challenges which the team members collaboratively can face (Salmon, Stanton and Jenkins
2017). Team work in our project has created value because we felt the sense of ownership
with the team and could connect directly with the need of the team. Therefore, team set up
has helped me greatly in doing the project. It is true that personality issues,
nonparticipation of team members had created issues at times to reach the short team goals
but we held meetings so that these issues can be overcome as early as possible.
In order to maintain collaborative process for achieving goals, the team members need
to communicate effectively among themselves (Rosen et al. 2018). In that case, the
communication method can be verbal or written. In order to keep the team communication
effective and continuous, we followed the process of face to face communication and
communication through email. In the face to face communication, the gap gets reduced and
the problems of gap in the communication is not allowed (Salmon, Stanton and Jenkins
2017). In this project, we team members prefers this process of holding meeting where all the
members are present physically and understand the tasks properly. This clarified the
responsibilities of these people quite effectively and through asking constant questions and
giving feedback and eliminated any type of gap to be grown. However, we also used the
email process so that the written communication take place in the team (Rosen 2019). This
makes the communicator process to be ethical and transparent that boosted the morale of the
team effectively.
Overall the experience of working in the team is quite good as I could learn a lot from
this. The most challenging part of the team work is amalgamating the team members as they
have different style of working and understanding of tasks. Another part of team working that
challenged my capability is the process of asking questions regarding the best plan to do the
project as we were not sure which path will take less time and effort to get the best result of
the project.

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In the future if I want to work in team, I want to use technology in such a manner
that will ease the process of communication among the team members in ne hand and create
less confusion in the process of achieving goals. I want to be open about everything so that
the unwilling members feel connected with the leader and the other team members, thus I will
be able to promote the team work and collaboration more prominently. In addition to this, the
team members will get more scope to use resources so that they do not feel the knowledge
gap to affect their growth.

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Project essay:
The topic of the project that I completed with my team was “Development of Mobile
based Application for Care Insurance”. This topic first of all was quite alluring as this had
perfect allocation in this particular digital world and demand of the customers in the
healthcare industry. As the topic was interesting I felt enthusiastic to work in this project
undoubtedly. I like the project and the process of doing this project very much because
through this I have gained the opportunity to learn a lot. I had the basic concept of mobile
application as I have the knack to find out most effective application in different subjects and
I sue them very much. This is the reason why it thought that the project will be appealing and
matching my interest. However, in this regard I have gained full support from the mentors
and the team members. This project has given me to scope to understand how the applications
of different target markets can be more applicable and relevant. In this aspect we started to
work focusing the healthcare industry which through this particular application will be
beneficial in no time and get the access to some of the most essential healthcare system of the
country.
The diagrams that we developed by following proper method, helped us to understand
the process of developing the application of mobile and considering the demand of the target
market for which we are developing this particular application. It is not only the elements
relating to the demand of the market regarding healthcare but also the process of making the
application more useful than the other applications (Valentine, Nembhard and Edmondson
2015). It was our aim in this project to attract the users to be more communicative through
this project so that they can get proper information what exactly they want to ask and share
their experience to develop the application and the service by eliminating all the problems
effectively.

7TEAMWORK AND PROJECT
I liked this particular project because there is a perfect blend of desire to make
healthcare facilities available in one hand and make the healthcare insurance more popular
among the people. The health insurance which people know available may not be so user
friendly and beneficial for them but through this application they can check the compatibility
of the care insurance more easily and take the benefits. The overall idea of working in this
project was good because I understood the drive of the project to make such an application
which will be availed by every class and creed or people irrespective of their financial
abilities and availability of android or other smart phones.
The most challenging areas for successfully completing our projects were the
workload and pre-requisite knowledge. We did not have the proper number of team members
who can help us in understanding all the areas. In such type of projects, the workforce need to
be strong so that the responsibilities can be spread out properly. In many cases, then members
need to perform the responsibilities of the others despite he or she did not have the capability
or skill to perform all those in one hand (Harrison, and Lock 2017). Therefore, we lacked the
human workforce for the success of this project that created scope for lack of knowledge of
the members of the team. As the number of members were less therefore we did not have
needed knowledge that lagged us in the competition with other teams. However, we cope up
with the challenges mentioned and survived to competition to develop successful application
of care insurance.
There were several challenges that created barrier for the development of this
application. First of all was the lack of performance management system that affected the
strategic planning for the development of this type of application. In this regard mention can
be made about the lack of knowledge of the members of the team. The strategic planning
process was needed for effective design lay out of the application based on which the entire
project will be done (Valentine, Nembhard and Edmondson 2015). Secondly, the time was a

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challenge for our team. This is due to the fact that the research work was essential for the
proper understanding of the demand of the customers regarding the need of the care
insurance. The market had different types of insurance companies that focused on different
types of insurance of healthcare services but not all of them can meet the requirements of the
customers properly. Therefore these requirements must be properly identified so that we can
develop such an application that will effectively meet all the requirements of the clients on
the behalf of the care insurance companies and they reach the customers based on the service
category. The problems regarding the application in terms of renewal of the insurances
lengthen the process of effective identification of appropriate insurance policies (Sharp,
Peters and Howard 2017). These created challenges for us to understand whether these
problems are mainly poor resource planning or the time and cost of the companies that make
the customers baffled and confused with the proper access of their identification of perfect
care insurance policies.
In the future, if I take responsibility of such a project, I shall first focus on the proper
utilisation of the technological system so that connection of the insurers become more
effective with the customers and the communication process become more transparent.
Secondly I will focus on the proper usage of technological support that can help the team
members to access the combines and their data which will make sure that we get proper
resources to reach on and understand the gap in the requirement of the people and the
inability of the companies. Finally it shall make sure that we get proper financial support to
carry on the research and plan execution process so that the designs which we lay do not face
problem in future.

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