GROUND RULES AND SHARED UNDERSTANDING

From the literature it is evident that the use of norms or ground rules will affect the maintenance roles of team projects. This section identifies feedback concerned with the ways in which the project teams of this case study recognised the need for ground rules, their use of the system’s output suggestions of ground rules, and the impact this function had on their team projects.

The second function that this system provided was to suggest ground rules for working together that could be agreed for the team. Norms and ground rules are concerned with the ways in which the team members work together and react to each other, which would be a main contributor to positive relationships between members. Agreeing upon ground rules acceptable to all the team members, and adhering to them ensures that trust levels are maintained, with improved cohesion within the team. The ground rules function in this system served these purposes:

• alerting the team members of some of the issues that might affect team cohesion;

• providing a means of ascertaining individuals’ perceptions of the importance of the suggested ground rules, and automating a process for helping to agree appropriate rules to adopt.

There was a general feeling that the list of ground rules presented by the system, and getting the opinion of all of the team members on their importance was useful, as a prompt to discussion, and to achieve some common agreement within the team:

“Ground rules. Really good, some may be upset, but acceptable to all as worded” TL, T8, 2004

“Good to air the ground rules, no one was shy to talk about it” TL, T8, 2004 “Everyone read them, knowledge transfer. No conflict, all agreed them” TL, T5, 2005

In the study by Liang et al. (2007) of co-located software development teams in Taiwan, differences in values held by individuals did increase relationship conflict, and negatively affect team performance. In a highly structured team, agreeing ground rules plays an important part, but the team leader or manager of the team may need to ensure the rules are being applied.

In this research we were interested in finding out how team members, and leaders in particular, used the output from the system. Team leaders had the discretion to use the output in any way they felt suitable for their particular team, whether a formal contract was produced or the output was used informally:

“Just looking rather than formal” TL, T2, 2005

“Team contract helped performance, like in outside world. Know the rules” TL, T13, 2005

“…getting people's opinions, success factors of the project” TL, T15, 2004

The idea of a written contract, that all team members sign up to, had been used by many of the teams in this case study in previous years, and several team leaders used the output from the agent system to formulate a contract to implement for their team:

“Ground rules used to establish a Contract” TL, T15, 2004

“I did make a team contract which includes some of the ground rules from the Guardian agent” TL, T15, 2004

“Make it [the output] into a Contract” FG, 2004

“…by looking at the ground rules, the team had a better understanding of team working, and I based the contract on them…” TL, T3, 2008

An alternative view is that the ground rules should be taken as read, so there is no need for any formal contract or the like:

“Ground rules, did not use output, as all rules on list are expected anyway” TL, T3, 2008

“Common sense, don’t need rules. Good to highlight to team at start” FG, 2004

“Much team work is undocumented rules” FG, 2002

Formalised contracts, based on the outputs of ground rules selected, seemed to help the teams to get started on the project. However, even a formal contract signed by all of the team members, does not necessarily ensure that the rules are adhered to. The ground rules outputs were used and interpreted in different ways:

“Set ground rules, tried to enforce them e.g. absences. Hard to say if it is as a result, or made them think about expectations” TL, T10, 2005

Alongside ground rules, team leaders recognised a need to agree on sanctions to be applied for non-compliance:

“The rules are a bit harsh, attendance tends to be an honourable agreement, I ask that I am informed of any non-attendance” TL, T7, 2004

“During meetings in agendas. Sanction if not done. Registers monitor [attendance] and deliverables chart monitor contribution. Everyone knows where they stand. Clear what consequences were, low mark” TL, T9, 2005

However, findings from this research did not suggest whether any sanctions agreed were effective or not, and the main difficulty still remained:

“Getting members to do the work is a problem” TL, T7, 2004

Even though students may feel that ground rules are common sense, establishing some working rules at the beginning may help to engender team cohesion. Appelbaum et al. (1998) suggest that handling conflict includes diagnosis and planning for overcoming it, including agreements on behaviour, which constitute ground rules. However, at the beginning of a team project intentions may be good, and it may be better if ground rules were to emerge over time as a need arises:

“Everyone has other methods of working – develop norms after a few weeks.” TL, T14, 2005

“All ticked everything, and did not necessarily comply” TL, T10, 2005

One team leader suggested that agreeing ground rules made no difference to their project, but that if the ground rules were emphasised more at the beginning, they are more likely to contribute to improved performance:

“Ground rules, no difference to performance, but should be emphasised more” TL, T5, 2005

A study by Patterson et al, with sports teams, found some correlation between norms of social interaction and cohesion, leading to improved team performance, but no correlation between task-related norms and cohesion towards performance (Patterson

et al. 2005). This suggests a need to only use norms related to social interaction, communication etc., rather than ground rules referring to actual work tasks. The ground rules included in the latest version of the prototype system comprised task related and social interaction ones, and were considered by most respondents to be a comprehensive list of possible rules, even though in the past, the notion of agreeing ground rules had not usually been considered by the students in this case study. This intervention did change the ways in which some teams worked, for example:

“…a big list but they are effective” TL, T15, 2004

“It did use it, but not how I thought I would” TL, T17, 2004

“Good to highlight to team at start, made them think about expectations” FG, 2004

Unfortunately, during the trial of the two later prototypes, some teams did not see the option on the screen to choose ground rules, and they overlooked it. So these teams simply used the task allocation function. Students reported being confused about what to do with this part of the system. The affordance was designed in, but not perceived by the team, and particularly the team leader, when using the other functions of the system.

In this research agreeing ground rules had the effect of making the team members think about their expectations of other members, ways of communicating and obligations towards others, as well as helping team cohesion. Although the students are studying on campus, they are working from home more often, so online communication was regarded as very important. Using the ground rules as the basis for a working contract was a preferred way of using the agent system output, but enforcing any such contract is problematical. There was a feeling that simply looking at the ground rules encouraged the team members to think about working relationships, which although not the intended purpose of the system, was a positive benefit over the experience of teams in previous years.

The next section considers the ways in which the outputs were communicated to team members, and the impact this might have on trust, culture and diversity.