« The Strategic Importance of the Enterprise Project Management Office
Consensus and Compromise in Project Management »

What Is the IQ of Your Project Team?

January 10, 2010 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Miscellaneous

What Is the IQ of Your Project Team?
By Demian Entrekin

As I think more and more about the nature of teams, at least within the context of Information Technology, I have started to consider the idea of a Team IQ. What is the value of thinking of project teams in terms of Intelligence Quotient?

The short answer is that it only makes sense if the concept of Team IQ helps your teams work better today, tomorrow and next year. In other words, Team IQ is a way to evaluate whether or not team performance is something we are good at or not.

Several years ago, I came to the simple conclusion that an individual’s talents are only relevant within the team context when those talents are effectively expressed through the team. In other words, individual talents don’t matter. Team talents matter. If it’s a team comprised of one person, then it’s still the team that matters.

Here are some of the variables I would assess in a Team IQ:

  • Skills: Does the team know how to work with the materials at hand for the project? If the project requires a particular technology, does the team know how to use the technology? This is often less important than all skills that follow, and may simply be a necessary given.

  • Ability to Learn: Can the team pick up new skills? As the technology evolves, the ability to learn becomes more important than the ability to know. In a team, individuals need to learn different things, but the team must be able to learn as a collective unit.

  • Experience: Has the team been through projects together before? Have they faced adversity, failure, confusion, error, perceived success, real success? How well did the team respond to challenges and external forces? The danger with experience is that it often leads to disillusionment. This requires energy to overcome.

  • Speed: Can the team produce quickly? This one can cause trouble, because speed is often in conflict with good sense. If we need something fast, are we willing to get it wrong and learn as we go?

  • Communication: How well can the team tell the story? How well can the team members keep to the script? How does the team go about changing the story? These are easy questions to ask but tough questions to answer. This requires thought.

  • Unity: We are better off wrong together than right apart. When we are wrong together, we learn, laugh, and keep moving. When we are right apart, we divide, snipe, and stall.

  • Curiosity: Can we create a “what if” mind set? Can we set aside our assumptions and ask questions that do not have a preconceived answer? Are we able to discover new things and rethink what we already know?

  • Openness: How well do we let in outside people and outside ideas? Are we able to go outside ourselves and look for what’s out there? Can we get out of the glass tower?

Some teams are assigned to rote work, and others are assigned to creative work. Either way, I would not give skills more than a weighting factor of 20%.

Demian is the CTO of Innotas. As founder and CEO, Entrekin oversaw marketing, product development, sales and services for the company. Today, he focuses on strategic product direction. Prior to Innotas, Entrekin co-founded Convoy Corporation and was Chief Architect of its initial products. In that role, Entrekin helped the company lead the middleware market with an annual growth rate of 670 percent and played an instrumental role in Convoy’s subsequent acquisition by New Era Networks in 1999. A recognized thought leader in Project Portfolio Management, Entrekin has published numerous papers on PPM and his blog (PPM Today) explores current issues related to successful PPM implementation. During his 18 year career, Demian has assumed leadership roles as a consultant and as an entrepreneur, delivering commercial and corporate database applications. Demian holds a B.A. in English from UCLA and an M.A. in English from San Francisco State University.

Share this article:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google
  • blogmarks
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • TwitThis
  • Yahoo! Buzz

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 10th, 2010 and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 person has left a comment

Hi Damien, I love your idea and have taken the liberty of extending it in a post of my own where I argued the case for measuring not just your team’s IQ but also the team’s EQ. See in http://quantmleap.com/blog/?p=778.

Cheers, Shim.

Shim Marom wrote on January 12, 2010 - 12:34 am | Visit Link

feel free to leave a comment

Comment Guidelines: Basic XHTML is allowed (a href, strong, em, code). All line breaks and paragraphs are automatically generated. Off-topic or inappropriate comments will be edited or deleted. Email addresses will never be published. Keep it PG-13 people!

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

All fields marked with " * " are required.

Project Management Categories