Email the Author
You can use this page to email Bruce Scharlau about 101+ Ideas to Improve Team Collaboration.
About the Book
Students often hate team collaboration, even though this is what they will need to do after graduation. Many students tell me they hate team assignments. This book tells you how to succeed in team collaboration situations.
Students worry about the team where no one cooperates, and only a few people do the real work. There are solutions to these challenges. You can do the work together instead of individually.
Some students worry about what happens if the team messes up the work. They fear that they might do it 'wrong', at poor quality, or are too slow to finish. The person here has many options to ensure that it is 'done correctly', at the right level of quality, and is done on time. You can do some parts together to set standards, and start integrating your work early too so that you fill in gaps, and revise it sooner rather than later.
Other students worry that the team lacks the skills required to do the work. They fear that learning new skills will take too long, and cause issues. The team can do a number of things to resolve this. Pair share and work together to learn the skills and apply them as a team.
The suggestions you find in this book will help you avoid the nightmare scenarios of team collaboration, so that you can move towards a dream experience.
Simply begin with these ideas and then add more where you see opportunities. The book offers over 101 more ideas to help you work better with others.
The book is broken into ten chapters that will guide you towards better team collaborations. Find out how you might use a team charter to agree on how you'll do the work as a team before you start. Explore how you know that you're colleagues are doing their work, and that it will be ready on time. Get tips on how you can remove risk from your work from the start, so that you sleep better at night.
Ten Categories of Team Collaboration
1. Why bother to collaborate?
2. Who's on the team?
3. How do we work together?
4. How do we talk to each other?
5. How do we stay in touch?
6. How do we know how much work there is to do?
7. How do we decide what order to do the work?
8. How do remove risk from our work?
9. How do we pull the work together?
10. How do we review what we did?
A key part of the book is a focus on the many aspects of team collaboration, which should be put in place before you start your work together. These also help you work more smoothly together. With them in place, all of your work should go smoother.
Use the book to suit your context, and apply more ideas where they seem suitable. You can start to apply the ideas with your current collaborations, and also use them when you start new ones.
The book is now complete.
About the Author
I engineer 'learn by doing' experiences for university students with lean, agile, & service design. I coach people and teams, facilitate open space & co-creative events.