Project Team Effectiveness

The traditional approach to the management of projects in the construction industry is constantly challenged, in particular the implementation of processes and the application of the project management knowledge base in complex projects. These challenges require a non-linear approach, a transformation from the control to the behavioural paradigm and a better understanding of how complexity in projects can be managed.

Project execution is essentially based on a project team performance. A team passes through phases of development from a forming phase to results delivery and learned lessons. Along with primary tasks dedicated by a project team to deliver a project results, there are some strategies and tactics whereby the effectiveness and interaction of team work are kept in high levels. This study discusses the effectiveness of particular team management tactics in practice. Volvo Car Corporation is the company used as a case to investigate some followed practices that may correspond to those tactics. The theories discussed are in relation to how to secure the right project team members, motivate team members effectively, and facilitate smooth communication flow within a team. Activities of monitoring the development a team performance in practice are also discussed.

In the current day changing global business scenarios, employee confidence, assertiveness, job satisfaction and work-life balance are very much important for global organizations. There is evidence of current day organizations using Bhagavad Gita to achieve these objectives. These are not the only applications of Bhagavad Gita. It can also give insights on project management. In this article, project management insights such as project management framework, project stakeholders, task characteristics, project execution, project leader characteristics and project team member characteristics and behavior are derived. It is applicable to project human resources management knowledge area. The concepts derived indicate the reliance of ancient scripts even in current day global business scenario.

Many organizations today are deploying project teams to deliver various services or resolve different problems as they recognize the team performance is always exceeding the individual outputs combined. According to Project Management Institute (PMI), project manager's leadership skills are deemed important as they help achieving the project goals set by stakeholders. However, there is lack of study whether a project manager's leadership roles can improve team satisfaction, team effectiveness and project performance concurrently (Cohen & Bailey, 1997) or following a certain pattern of dependencies. This study developed a research model based on research works conducted by Cohen and Bailey (1997) and Yukl (2010) to empirically analyze how leadership roles are influencing team satisfaction, team effectiveness and project performance. Result showed that when a project manager is demonstrating his or her leadership roles more frequently, the project team becomes more effective. When the team effectiveness increases, this will lead to higher team satisfaction and improve project performance. Moreover, when the project team becomes more satisfied, it will also directly increase the project performance. However, execution of the leadership roles by project manager will not directly influence the team satisfaction and project performance. Discussion, conclusion, limitation and future research are also included in this article.

In this study, the authors explore the impact of the enhanced commissioning process required by LEED certification on the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) professionals through a case study of a (LEED) New Construction in New Cairo, Egypt. While research has consistently shown the positive impact of green-rated buildings on building occupants, little research discusses the impact of green building rating on AEC professionals. Observation, document analysis, and interview of AEC professionals were used throughout the course of design and construction to identify the impact of the enhanced commissioning process on the quality of Project delivery and experience of AEC professionals. All technical and managerial issues of the entire enhanced commissioning process were recorded and thoroughly analyzed. As a result, a comprehensive comparison between mainstream projects and the current LEED-certified building is established. The study introduces a novel insight on green bu...

This study attempts to investigate the effectiveness of grade-level teams within Emirates International Academy – EIA (pseudonym), a fast-accelerating private educational organization in the UAE, using a questionnaire survey. In order to determine the characteristics and elements of an effective team and, thus, formulate specific research questions, Mickan and Roger (2000) is adopted for further study and compared with other literature prior to conducting the empirical study. This research is quantitative in nature and arrives at conclusions in an inductive manner, thus generalize the findings on similar organizations operating in the UAE. It is observed that the grade-level teams within EIA achieve goals that link with the purpose of the Academy and most of the teams, in general, are effective but do not have sufficient performance feedback opportunities for development. In order
to increase the overall team effectiveness, senior leadership and team leaders are recommended to provide and encourage opportunities for teams to reflect upon self- and group- performance.

As more project teams are formed to help Malaysian organizations in achieving their objectives that individual efforts cannot achieve, there is a compelling reason to understand the critical factors that can influence project team effectiveness, because the effectiveness outcome can yield benefits to organizations.  This study developed a research model underpinned on Cohen & Bailey’s (1997) Team Effectiveness Framework to empirically analyze some critical factors that influence project team effectiveness.  Results show that project manager’s leadership roles are not directly influencing project team effectiveness, but they are directly influencing both team building & participation, and team shared mental models in which these two factors are directly and positively influencing project team effectiveness.

The study aimed at identifying the impact of the delegation of authority on employees' performance at great Irbid municipality. It has constructed on measuring the impact of delegation on efficiency, effectiveness and empowerment. Sample of the study represented by employees in which they are embedded in central and executive management through a random sampling reached to (200) employees from total (1500). The sample was used as a tool for achieving the results. After applying Alpha measurement, it has been shown that validity was (82%). Means, standard deviation, percentages, (T-test), and Cronbach Alpha test were used and applied. The results of the study have shown that there is a statically significant for delegation of authority on efficiency, effectiveness and empowerment of employees' performance at great Irbid municipality.

Top management support has generally been considered the most critical factor for the success of IS projects. Typically, there have developed implicit or explicit assumptions that top management support has to be constant and consistent during the entire life of an IS implementation project. However, previous research investigating this issue has been based mainly on a 'single project' perspective, although contemporary organisational settings have increasingly involved many projects taking place simultaneously. Such multiple-project environments bring into question the feasibility of the previous assumptions and invite revisiting them. This paper aims to do this by examining the materialisation of top management support in a multiple-project environment. To this end, it investigates the interactions between a project to implement an Enterprise Resource Planning system and other projects and programmes in a prominent international organisation. It applies a framework from Actor Network Theory to explore the different aspects of what is involved in being in a multiple-project environment and the nature of the materialisation of top management support. The findings unravel some of the complexity surrounding top management support in this contemporary organisational setting. Some important implications for theory and practice are highlighted and discussed.

Variations on construction projects are very common and managing them is very significant. Challenges to project teams in managing variations generally retard the progress of a construction project. Such challenges affect all parties involved including the client, consultant and contractors, the impact of how badly it affects the project as a whole depends on the degree of the challenges to the team characteristic in question. The aim is therefore to examine the challenges in managing variations in a team setting. A questionnaire survey was conducted to rate 20 challenges identified from literature with the members of some selected construction project teams. The study used purposive sampling in choosing construction teams and some selected projects. The data was subjected to principal component analysis to reduce the challenges into further groupings. The analysis generated six factor groupings namely 'weak management skills', 'divergent motivating interest', 'problems with coordination', 'Inflexibility attributable to lack of trust', 'communication difficulties' and 'bureaucratic barriers'. The paper concludes with a discussion of the challenges from the results and draws implications for future research.

Many organizations are using project teams to achieve their organizational goals because they believe the importance and benefits of project teams. Project managers are advised to learn and demonstrate the leadership roles as proposed by Quinn (1988) because these roles can improve the project team effectiveness. Moreover, it is important to select an experienced project manager leading an effective team at the same time negotiating for ample time to execute the project. The current study developed a research model underpinned on models related to Quinn (1988) leadership roles and Hoevemeyer (1993) five criteria of project team effectiveness as well as four demographic moderators i.e. project management experience, project team size, project duration and project value size. Based on a sample of 201 project managers, this empirical study had confirmed that a project manager’s leadership roles are positively influencing project team effectiveness. At the same time, only project management experience and project duration are positively moderating the relationship between leadership roles and project team effectiveness.

Multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) are conventionally recommended in mental health
care literature as an important way to offer holistic treatment provision to patients. This
study aims to explore multidisciplinary teamwork in contemporary mental health
settings, particularly what aids and hinders the process of multidisciplinary teamworking,
and the social work contribution in such teams. In order to attain an in-depth
exploration of these phenomena, a single case study design was employed. Within this
design, data were generated through semi-structured interviews and structured
observation of a mental health MDT in Ireland. These data were analysed using
interpretative phenomenological analysis. The research highlights how the concept of
mental illness is contested within this MDT, with the medical model dominant within
an environment of fluid working arrangements. Professional role blurring and
stereotyping were found to impact the division of labour on this team, with role
negotiation found to be an integral part of retaining a professional’s practice identity.
This research raises concerns for social work’s capacity to function within mental
health MDTs in Ireland, and highlights ways in which social work educators might
respond in order to empower Irish social workers to meet the challenges of mental
health multidisciplinary teamworking.

Purpose -The purpose of this study was to develop and empirically explore a model of four intragroup conflict types (the 4IC model), consisting of an emotional person, a cognitive task, an emotional task, and a cognitive person conflict. The two first conflict types are similar to existing conceptualizations, whereas the two latter represent new dimensions of group conflict.

Project-based business is significantly growing in different sectors due to multiple advantages projects can offer. However, one major concerns of projects is being a temporary business with high possibilities of losing organizational knowledge, and greater difficulties in assuring teams' commitment, causing slowness in organizational learnability and capability to evolve and become more competitive. Therefore, many project-based organizations consider knowledge management initiatives to fill that gap. Nevertheless, many of such initiatives fail to deliver the expected results due to different failure factors and barriers, while others could be more successful due to a group of success factors and enablers. This article discusses a conceptual model consisted of six success factors that contribute to the overall success of KM initiatives in project-based organizations.

How can educators enhance academic outcomes and career-readiness competencies in diversely-composed teams through group peer feedback?

The National Association of Colleges and Employers Job Outlook Report for 2019 identified that teamwork, collaboration, professionalism, and oral communications rate amongst the most highly needed Career Readiness Competencies (CRCs) sought by employers (NACE, 2018). These competencies rate at least as ‘Essential’ or ’Absolutely essential’. To a lesser extent, global and multicultural fluency was rated as ‘Somewhat essential’. Nevertheless, the requirements for multicultural fluency are certainly rising. Consequently, teachers have the opportunity and responsibility to apply educational practices that maximise the benefits associated with assigning academic assignments to diversely-composed teams.

Group assignments provide learners with opportunities to establish, practice, and develop essential CRCs including multicultural fluency. However, for effective learning to be surfaced from a group assignment the teacher must ‘wrap around’ several additional learning processes. First, learners must distinguish between the exemplary, adequate, and inadequate demonstration of the CRCs. Second, learners must practice applying their CRCs within the context of their group assignment. Finally, well-managed peer assessment and peer feedback processes are crucial to ensuring that learners gain timely feedback on their CRC strengths and areas for development.  Specifically, the peer feedback process must provide measures that value the inclusion of others and the contribution towards helping others learn course concepts and project requirements.

Group assignments generate several possible risks such as social loafing, exclusion, and dominating behaviour. These risks may be raised as group composition becomes more diverse as measured by factors such as culture, country of origin, geographic location, age, gender, subject discipline, personality, and life experience. Our evidence is that early risk identification through formative group peer assessment and peer feedback is an effective approach towards mitigating these types of risks, raising overall team cohesion, team performance, academic results, and, ultimately graduate employability (Sprague, Wilson, & McKenzie, 2019, Mellalieu & Dodd, 2018).

We address questions including:

- What is the role of peer assessment and peer feedback in raising academic outcomes and career-readiness competencies?

- How can peer assessments be adjusted to value the inclusion of others and helping others?

- What are the best practices for managing peer assessment and feedback in a teaching course comprising diverse learners?

- How can peer feedback be used to identify and mitigate promptly the risks associated with diverse and multicultural teams undertaking group assignments?

- How can the design of group projects be improved to value diversity and enable the enhancement of global and multicultural fluency?

This paper shows that internal and external lenses are required to understand entrepreneurial team performance. The findings indicate that high-performing entrepreneurial teams – as rated by external evaluators – gather a wide range of information from external contacts, and are efficient in doing so, i.e., using "weak" rather than "strong" ties. In addition, these teams have internal make-ups that are open to outside influences. The findings also show that while members know the benefit of engaging external contacts, they are less aware of the need for efficient information gathering.

Abstract
The traditional approach to the management of projects in the construction industry is constantly challenged, in particular the implementation of processes and the application of the project management knowledge base in complex projects. These challenges require a nonlinear approach, a transformation from the control to the behavioural paradigm and a better understanding of how complexity in projects can be managed.

Interconnections between the various project parties, from individuals to companies, have always been identified as an area which requires attention. Indeed, project management sub-processes that have to consider interconnections, such as selection of project team members, structuring the project teams as well as the management style adopted, are either not
implemented or the execution remains subjective, despite the existence of appropriate techniques. Considering that complexity occurs in non-linear systems and interconnections, the lack of appropriate means affects the implementation of such sub-processes and consequently performance. Investigating the complexity of the interconnections for the two sub-processes and the management style adopted and enabling the management of its effects must enhance implementation and thus project outcome. Therefore, the development of a framework is proposed which, by using existing knowledge and complexity characteristics, will allow project management (PM) practitioners the multiple implementation of actions for the management of the effects of the complexity of interconnections on construction projects through the two sub-processes and the management style adopted.

The rationale of this investigation is that interconnections, formed between and affected by social entities in projects, give rise to complexity, which can be managed by improving the project organisation and the management style followed. A research strategy was established which encompassed a survey, interviews and case studies with both UK client and construction PM practitioners. The survey results confirmed previous findings and indicated that, although PM practitioners are aware of techniques and are given guidance, these are neither implemented nor considered. Consequently, project management outcome remains only at acceptable levels. Interviews confirmed that the complexity of interconnections is not considered and very limited actions are taken to manage its effects when organising project teams or considering the management style to be followed. Indeed the effect of complexity of interconnections on project performance is dramatic as established through the case studies.

Therefore, consideration should be given to means for managing complexity of interconnections when selecting team members, structuring the project teams and when deciding on the management style to be adopted. Awareness and guidance on processes currently given to PMs has to materialise, and this can be achieved through the use of the framework for managing the complexity of interconnections.

Key Words: Complexity, Interconnections, Project Management, Selecting Team Members,
Structuring Teams, Management Style

Team working is becoming increasingly important in modern organizations due to its beneficial outcomes. A team's performance levels are determined by complex interactions between the attributes of its individual members, the communication and dynamics between members, the working environment, and the team's work tasks. As organizations evolve, so too does the nature of team working. During the past two decades, product development in engineering organizations has increasingly been undertaken by multidisciplinary integrated product teams. Such increasing complexity means that the nature of research methods for studying teams must also evolve. Accordingly, this paper proposes an agent-based modeling approach for simulating team working within an engineering environment, informed by research conducted in two engineering organizations. The model includes a number of variables at an individual level (competency, motivation, availability, response rate), team level (communication, shared mental models, trust), and task level (difficulty, workflow), which jointly determine team performance (quality, time to complete the task, time spent working on the task). In addition to describing the model's development, the paper also reports the results of various simulation runs that were conducted in response to realistic team working scenarios, together with its validation. Finally, the paper discusses the model's practical applications as a tool for facilitating organizational decision making with respect to optimizing team working.

This talk was constructed in near real time on request of participants at the FINT workshop on "Interactive Workshop on Organizational Trust Interventions" held in Milan, Italy 15 June 2012.  The talk describes my personal experiences and point of view.  It does not represent the views of current employer (IHMC), NASA, or any other agency or personnel of the US Government.

The aim of this study was to investigate multiprofessional collaboration as well as collaboration between professionals and challenging students and their parents in which the focus for these collaborations was on handling the challenging students’ academic and social behavior. A grounded theory study of collaboration between a prereferral resource team and teachers, principals, challenging students, and their parents was conducted. Qualitative interview and focus group methods were used. The findings presented a grounded theory of collaborative synchronizing in relation to challenging students around two ideal types, human resource synchronizing and human resource desynchronizing.

"The modern business world is closely associated with IT projects. Unfortunately, research reports still have unsatisfactory percentage of projects completed successfully. The reasons for this phenomenon are not, however, in the field of technology and methodology, but in the human factor. This article is going to meet this phenomenon, dealing with issues of IT project from the perspective of project teams. Established specification types of IT teams and detailed the risks posed by them to implement IT projects, as their environment. This is the stage which is the basis for studies to develop IT teams capable of effective and efficient implementation of IT projects.
Keywords: IT project, IT project team, effective team collaboration, interaction IT team - the environment, the leader of IT."

Team is the primary mechanism through which product development projects are executed. Despite regular theoretical discussions on the importance of cross-functional team and concurrent engineering to improve new product development projects, empirical studies on consequence of integrated product and process development (IPPD) effectiveness on teamwork is largely missing in existing product development literature. IPDD projects execute concurrent activities that go through several iterations before the deliverable of each stage are finalised. Based on information processing theory and goal-setting theory for team, this study hypothesise shared project mission, clarity of the project target, and customer and supplier involvement positively influences effectiveness of IPPD project. We further hypothesise that such effective IPPD leads to teamwork which can have a positive impact on project performance in terms of product development cost, product development time, and customer satisfac...

Over the last ten years organisational teams have become more distributed and complex. Despite the number of technologies available to assist teams and group-based work, it is still exceedingly difficult to manage teams. And contrary to popular belief the introduction of new real-time conferencing and collaboration technologies can actually make things worse. It may distract team members from their application focus and drive them into ongoing loops of technology experimentation. In these situations, the focus on the work mission is often lost in favour of mastering and attempting to extract ever increasing benefits from technology itself.

Project-based business is significantly growing in different sectors due to multiple advantages projects can offer. However, one major concerns of projects is being a temporary business with high possibilities of losing organizational knowledge, and greater difficulties in assuring teams' commitment, causing slowness in organizational learnability and capability to evolve and become more competitive. Therefore, many project-based organizations consider knowledge management initiatives to fill that gap. Nevertheless, many of such initiatives fail to deliver the expected results due to different failure factors and barriers, while others could be more successful due to a group of success factors and enablers. This article discusses a conceptual model consisted of six success factors that contribute to the overall success of KM initiatives in project-based organizations.

In this study, the authors explore the impact of the enhanced commissioning process required by LEED certification on the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) professionals through a case study of a (LEED) New Construction in New Cairo, Egypt. While research has consistently shown the positive impact of green-rated buildings on building occupants, little research discusses the impact of green building rating on AEC professionals. Observation, document analysis, and interview of AEC professionals were used throughout the course of design and construction to identify the impact of the enhanced commissioning process on the quality of Project delivery and experience of AEC professionals. All technical and managerial issues of the entire enhanced commissioning process were recorded and thoroughly analyzed. As a result, a comprehensive comparison between mainstream projects and the current LEED-certified building is established. The study introduces a novel insight on green building design and construction practice as a potential culture of quality for the building industry in developing countries.

Today's design activities are usually conducted in teams of professionals who represent different design domains, e.g. architects and engineers. . Within these teams clear and accurate communication of design and technical concepts and information is critical. A current trend is for the conduct and management of these teams to move towards working more in virtual environments. The use of high bandwidth Information and Communication Technologies (ICT's) is increasing and with this increase is the need to better understand those generic skills, such as communication, which contribute to the successful application of the ICT hardware and software. Communication skills have been identified as an important factor which may be affected in the transition from co-located team collaboration to the virtual environment. These issues usually manifest themselves in the ability of team members to use both visual and verbal forms of communication concurrently. Also of significance is the importance of "cues" in communication interactions during collaboration, this resulting in less effective achievement of shared understanding among team members. This paper reports on industry based research of both colocated and virtual teams involved in the activity of designing. It concentrates on the communication between team members. The results of this research identify a range of communication issues which confront these teams in their design activities which will inform, in association with other factors being researched, which are outside the scope of this paper, the development of skills auditing and mapping tools.

Today's design activities are usually conducted in teams of professionals who represent different design domains, eg architects and engineers. . Within these teams clear and accurate communication of design and technical concepts and information is critical. A current trend is for the ...

Today's design activities are usually conducted in teams of professionals who represent different design domains, eg architects and engineers. . Within these teams clear and accurate communication of design and technical concepts and information is critical. A current trend is for the ...

Purpose -The purpose of this study was to develop and empirically explore a model of four intragroup conflict types (the 4IC model), consisting of an emotional person, a cognitive task, an emotional task, and a cognitive person conflict. The two first conflict types are similar to existing conceptualizations, whereas the two latter represent new dimensions of group conflict.

We no longer view organizations as strict hierarchies with obvious bor- ders and vertical information flows. We still see the hierarchy, but we also see the network (both human and computer) and information flowing vertically, hori- zontally and diagonally. The organiza- tion’s borders have also become fuzzy with business processes spanning de- partments and divisions — and extend- ing out to customers and suppliers.

Виявлено особливості командно-рольової структури проекту. Розглянуто застосування саморозвиваючих систем Лотки–Вольтерри–Гаузе з урахуванням типів взаємодії «співпраця» і «конкуренція» при формуванні команди проекту. Показано можливості математичного моделювання тенденцій рольової активності учасників команди проекту. Визначена точка рівноваги тенденцій рольової активності, в якій мінімальний вплив максимально визначає подальший стан системи.

Conflict can be functional or dysfunctional to the organization’s performance. This study focused on the relationship between conflict approaches implemented by the project manager based on project team member’s perception on the effectiveness of the project manager in managing project’s conflict. Questionnaires were modified from Barker et al. (1988) to measure conflict management approaches and outcomes of managing project conflict. Data were gathered from 57 respondents who worked in the Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) contractors serving the upstream sector of the Oil and Gas industry in Indonesia. By using Pearson correlation, result of this study indicated that project managers were perceived to be effective in managing project confl ict when implementing cooperative and confi rmative approaches, but ineffective when combining competitive and avoidance approaches. Further research should investigate correlation between cultural dimensions with conflict approaches and outcomes of managing conflict.

Over the last ten years organisational teams have become more distributed and complex. Despite the number of technologies available to assist teams and group-based work, it is still exceedingly difficult to manage teams. And contrary to popular belief the introduction of new real-time conferencing and collaboration technologies can actually make things worse. It may distract team members from their application focus and drive them into ongoing loops of technology experimentation. In these situations, the focus on the work mission is often lost in favour of mastering and attempting to extract ever increasing benefits from technology itself.

In concurrent engineering projects driven by short delivery times, team performance rests on the team’s capability to quickly and effectively handle different, emergent issues. We conducted an exploratory study of a large, dynamically complex project in which team members had a record of “good problem-solving abilities.” The study revealed how the team members demonstrated a collective ability to swiftly handle emergent issues, which again decreased the intensity of time and performance pressure. Beyond formal processes combined with lean practices, supporting this ability were situation awareness, task-based subgroups, direct lines of communication, and trust. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/8756972820928695

This slide deck was presented during Annual Summit on Business and Entrepreneurial Studies on 17-Oct-2011. It depicted what were some of the factors that had influenced project team effectiveness. Despite the pilot study was using convenient sample of 37, but later larger random sample of 133 shows the similar results (see last slide). We can infer from this study that the results can generalize to the entire population of PMI Malaysia Chapter.

Today's design activities are usually conducted in teams of professionals who represent different design domains, eg architects and engineers. . Within these teams clear and accurate communication of design and technical concepts and information is critical. A current trend is for the ...

Team is the primary mechanism through which product development projects are executed. Despite regular theoretical discussions on the importance of cross-functional team and concurrent engineering to improve new product development projects, empirical studies on consequence of integrated product and process development (IPPD) effectiveness on teamwork is largely missing in existing product development literature. IPDD projects execute concurrent activities that go through several iterations before the deliv-erable of each stage are finalised. Based on information processing theory and goal-setting theory for team, this study hypothesise shared project mission, clarity of the project target, and customer and supplier involvement positively influences effectiveness of IPPD project. We further hypothesise that such effective IPPD leads to teamwork which can have a positive impact on project performance in terms of product development cost, product development time, and customer satisfaction. Primary data collected from 191 IPPD projects from U.S. automotive industry were analysed using structural equation modelling technique. All the hypotheses representing antecedents of effective IPPD and the consequence of effective IPPD were found to be supported in the current study.

Many organizations today are deploying project teams to deliver various services or resolve different problems as they recognize the team performance is always exceeding the individual outputs combined.  According to Project Management Institute (PMI), project manager’s leadership skills are deemed important as they help achieving the project goals set by stakeholders.  However, there is lack of study whether a project manager’s leadership roles can improve team satisfaction, team effectiveness and project performance concurrently (Cohen & Bailey, 1997) or following a certain pattern of dependencies.  This study developed a research model based on research works conducted by Cohen and Bailey (1997) and Yukl (2010) to empirically analyze how leadership roles are influencing team satisfaction, team effectiveness and project performance.  Result showed that when a project manager is demonstrating his or her leadership roles more frequently, the project team becomes more effective.  When the team effectiveness increases, this will lead to higher team satisfaction and improve project performance.  Moreover, when the project team becomes more satisfied, it will also directly increase the project performance.  However, execution of the leadership roles by project manager will not directly influence the team satisfaction and project performance.  Discussion, conclusion, limitation and future research are also included in this article.

Today's design activities are usually conducted in teams of professionals who represent different design domains, e.g. architects and engineers. . Within these teams clear and accurate communication of design and technical concepts and information is critical. A current trend is for the conduct and management of these teams to move towards working more in virtual environments. The use of high bandwidth Information and Communication Technologies (ICT's) is increasing and with this increase is the need to better understand those generic skills, such as communication, which contribute to the successful application of the ICT hardware and software. Communication skills have been identified as an important factor which may be affected in the transition from co-located team collaboration to the virtual environment. These issues usually manifest themselves in the ability of team members to use both visual and verbal forms of communication concurrently. Also of significance is the importance of "cues" in communication interactions during collaboration, this resulting in less effective achievement of shared understanding among team members. This paper reports on industry based research of both colocated and virtual teams involved in the activity of designing. It concentrates on the communication between team members. The results of this research identify a range of communication issues which confront these teams in their design activities which will inform, in association with other factors being researched, which are outside the scope of this paper, the development of skills auditing and mapping tools.