Title: 1.2 Communications within a Team Lesson
Course: ATEP - MMT: Module A: > Section: PHASE 1 CLARIFY THE PROBLEM: SPECIFICATIONS AND CONSTRAINTS

1.2.1 Team Discussions

The initial team meeting should set the ground rules for future meetings.  Start with the "Five Ws and One H". They are Who, What, Why, When, Where and How. As part of all basic journalism courses, the words are used to explain that your story isn’t complete until you answer all six questions. It’s hard to argue this point, since missing any of these questions leaves a hole in your story. Even if you’re not reporting on the news of the day, this concept is also true when working in a team environment and your goal is to create or change a design.

Who | Who will be responsible?
What | What is the goal, rewards and penalties?
Why | Why is the project being done?
When | When will the project milestones be due?
Where | Where will the project components take place?
How | How will the project tasks be accomplished?

1.2.1.1 W,W,W,W,W & H Assignment

Give the who, what, where, when, why and how of your project.  You will upload the list at the end of the lesson, in the Team Discussions Assignment area.

1.2.2 The Delphi Process for Team Meetings

The Delphi Process is based on the assumption that group decisions are more valid than individual decisions.  The method uses the principle that decisions from a structured group of individuals are more accurate than those from unstructured groups.  The Rand Corporation (Research ANd Development) developed the Delphi method in the 1950's originally to forecast the impact of technology on warfare. It is a structured communication technique, originally developed as a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts. The experts answer questionnaires in two or more rounds. After each round, a facilitator provides an anonymous summary of the experts' forecasts from the previous round as well as the reasons they provided for their judgments. Thus, experts are encouraged to revise their earlier answers in light of the replies of other members of their panel. It is believed that during this process the range of the answers will decrease and the group will converge towards the "correct" answer. Finally, the process is stopped after a pre-defined stop criterion (e.g. number of rounds, achievement of consensus, stability of results) and the scores of the final rounds determine the results. The goal is to reduce the range of responses and arrive at something closer to expert consensus.

The technique can also be adapted for use in face-to-face meetings, where Delphi panel experts interact between survey rounds.  This adaption is called mini-Delphi or Estimate-Talk-Estimate (ETE). The Delphi method has been widely adopted and is still in use today.