TABLE OF CONTENTS This chapter looks at project teams and their performance in some detail, highlights factors which make for excellence in the individual performance of team members, and points out pitfalls which may trap the unwary.
It is a truism that today's engineering is done mostly by groups of engineers working closely together instead of by individuals. Many of today's projects are large and complex space projects, for example. Most require the contributions of different kinds of professionally trained people. Also, today there are more engineers to be organized and managed. Therefore, extensive team effort will be with the profession for a long time to come.
There is an almost unbelievable difference in output from one project team to another. A group on one project shines as an example of success and professional progress. An almost identical group on another job is the epitome of everything mediocre and humdrum with respect to both work performance and personal development. A third group, having spent considerable money and time with substantially invisible results, and often wrangling among themselves, will find itself dissolved or completely reorganized.
We would expect some variation between groups of engineers, as we would between individuals, but not as much as actually occurs. People on two projects are trained in much the same way technically. Various types and degrees of talent are distributed in each group. Each manager organizes and supports his group with a sincere intention of getting the job done. Certainly one group seems...
