Managing Quality Improvement Teams and Projects

Why do you suppose the voice of participation and teamwork to managebusiness today?

• One of the biggest reasons is Complexity that drive workers from routine work to the knowledge work, which is work that involves the development and transmission of knowledge and information.

A Team is defined as a finite number of individuals who are united in a common purpose.

Why employees enjoy teams?

• Mutuality: the need for mutual support and encouragement .

• Recognition for personal achievement: by rewards, incentives and status.

• Belonging: the individual’s need for supportive, cohesive, and friendly team relations.

• Bounded power: the need for authority and control over project resources and people to influence decisions and opportunities.

• Creative autonomy :give employees opportunity to use their creativity , and enjoy good working conditions.

Leading teams for quality

• Employee empowerment: means giving power to team members who had little control over

their jobs.

• Is an important factor in improving employee moral and performance.

• Tell employees that their thoughts and ideas are valued.

Flattening hierarchies for improved effectiveness

Top managers have eliminated layers of bureaucratic managers in order to improve communication and simplify work.

Having many layers of management can increase the time required to perform work.

Team leader roles and responsibilities

•Setting team direction and seeking future opportunities.

•Reinforce values and provide a system for achieving desired goals.

•Establish expectations for high level of performance, customer focus and continuous learning.

•Responsible for communication and providing feedback.

Situational leadership model

Team roles and responsibilities

Team formation and evolution

storming

forming

performing

norming

mourning

Types of teams

Process improvement teams: • may work under the direction of management or self directed.• Identifying opportunities• Gathering and analyzing data • Making recommendations• Implementing change

Cross functional teams:• for solving problems in multiple function.• Quality related problems such as communication or

redesigning company wide processes.

Types of teams

Tiger teams:

• Is a high powered team assigned to work on a specific problem for a short period of time.

Natural work groups

• Are teams organized around a common product, customer, or service.

• The tasks: increasing responsiveness to customer and market demand.

Types of teams

Self directed work teams• Is chartered to work on projects identified by team members

themselves.

• Little s: are made up of employees empowered to identify opportunities for improvement, select projects, and complete implementation.

• Big S: teams are involved in managing the different functions of the company. Ex: decisions in finance, pay, processes, customers …

Types of teams

Virtual teams• These teams rarely or never physically meet .

• Internet and intranet-based applications called teamwork, allow us to access the web, build a team, share ideas, hold virtual meetings, brainstorm, keep schedules, and archive past results with people around the world

Implementing teams

The role of facilitator is to make it easy for the group to know :where it is going?Why it wants to get there? How to get there?And what it is going to do next?

• Meeting management: is an important skill for a facilitator of quality improvement teams.

Steps required for planning a meeting:• Defining an agenda• Developing meeting objectives• Designing the agenda activity outline• Using process techniques

Conflict resolution in teams

• As people work closely together in teams, conflicts arise.

Four recognizable stages occur in the conflict resolution process:

• Frustration: competition and aggression.• Conceptualization and orientation: opponents

identify the issues that need to be resolved.• Interaction: team members discuss problems.• Outcome: the problem is resolved.

Desire to satisfy other party’s concerns.

DesireTo satisfy Our own concerns

Modes of conflict behavior

Leaders resolve conflict in a variety of ways:

1. Passive conflict resolution2. Win-win3. Structured problem solving4. Confronting conflicts5. Choosing a winner6. Selecting a better alternative7. Preventing conflict

Tools used in controlling projects

1. Qualifying projects

• To determine the worthiness of a project on different dimensions.

• Commonly used method are cost-benefits analysis using payback period.

• Direct cost , indirect cost, expected returns for projects.

2. Project charter

• Is a simple tool to help teams Identify objectives, participants, and expected benefits from the project.

3. force-field analysis

• This tool is designed to identify and quantify all of the forces for or against organizational change.

4. Work breakdown structure 1. Identifying precedence relationships2. Identifying outcome measures3. Identifying task times : (a=optimistic completion time, m=most likely completion

time, b=pessimistic completion time)

Work breakdown structure

• Expected time = (a+ 4m +b)/6

• The task variance ²t={(b-a)/6} ²

• The project variance ²T = ∑ ² , from t=1 to n

• The project standard deviation T = √ ²T

• t= task time , T= project completion time

5. Activity network diagram

• The following steps are used to develop a Program evaluation review technique (PERT chart):

• List all the tasks.

• Determine task time.

• Indicate which tasks depend on the completion of the other tasks in the project.

• Draw the network diagram.

Activity network diagram

• Compute early start and early finish times from left to right.

• Compute late start and late finish times from right to left.

• Compute slack times slack time = late start – early start.

• Determine the critical path that links activities with zero slack.

6. Arrow Gantt chart

7. Managing multiple projects