The Role of the Design Team

    How involved the steering committee becomes in the design process varies.  Since it can be a time-consuming effort, many steering committees delegate the actual implementation to a Design team.  The Design team might include members of the steering committee, but it also has a broader representation of supervisors, team members, union officials, human resource practitioners, and if required functional experts from support areas such as engineering, or MIS.  Usually the design team is responsible for designing, implementing, monitoring, and hammering out the details of self-directed teams (Welling et al. 1991). Questions they address include:

• How will teams be structured?

• What will the team boundaries be?

• What tasks will the teams be responsible for?

• What outcomes or results of the teams’ efforts will be measures?

• How can the facilities be arranged to support team functioning?

• How will the teams get the information they need to manage their business?

• Where will the teams meet?

• What training will the teams need?

• How will the reward systems support the organization's values?

• How will the design team keep the teams on track and “renew” the process?

• How will the teams assess their performance?

    For teams to work most effectively, a company will need to change the way work is designed just as it must modify various organizational systems to support the design.  It is also necessary to develop and execute a change plan.  Almost everyone in an organization will be important to the success of a team implementation.  Keep in mind that any implementation can stray a bit off course.  For this reason, Welling et al. (1991) states that organizations must evaluate progress continually, making changes along the way in order to keep on track.  The Figure below  illustrates each of the key stages of initiating teams (Welling et al., 1991).

Team Design Process (p. 102) 

Resources: Design Meeting Agenda

         Task Team Report

          Management Design Team Presentation

                    Task Team Update