Overview:
This assignment is a bit of a departure from a typical case study. This week we are looking at what makes a “high-performance” team. Some projects such as a moon landing or the development of a new product or responding to a world crisis may be large and important. They are seen as projects that cannot be allowed to fail. This week, we will look at a number of such projects in a “compare and contrast” essay.
Details:
- Be sure to review chapter 6 in Pinto, especially focusing on high-performance teams. You may wish to visit an outside source, too, because your goal is to understand deeply the characteristics that define a high-performance team and the barriers that can prevent a team from performing at that level.
- Visit the article found at Teams That Changed The World (Team Case Studies) – WorkStyle. This is the primary source material for this assignment, so you want to be familiar with it, too.
- Note that this article includes brief descriptions of some well-known examples of high-performing teams. Read carefully through the article to gain a basic understanding of the projects discussed.
- Select 2 of the projects discussed in this article for further analysis. You will want to pick projects you find very interesting.
- Find credible sources for more detailed descriptions of each of your selected projects.
- Using the description of high-performing teams, how they are formed, and how they fail detailed in Chapter 6 of Pinto, compare your 2 selected projects. Since they were successful projects, you should focus part of your discussion on how the barriers to success were avoided or overcome.
- Conclude with a summary of what we can learn about high-performance teams from studying these two examples.
- I expect you will need some space to fully discuss this topic. Expect to write between 800 and 1000 words but, as always, this range is a mere guideline. Write as much as you need to cover the details you believe are important.
- Please treat this as a formal professional paper. That means it should be neat, well-written, and use in-text citations for information obtained from a source as well as include a formal reference list at the end. Please use a cover page, as well.
- Your own development will be much greater if you avoid using AI to write parts or all of it.
- For the best experience, let yourself “get into” this. Explore the projects because you would like to know how they worked so well. Explore them because you would like to be able to lead a project like one of these someday.
- This will not be a good experience if you procrastinate, so get going as soon as you can. Thanks.