Team Principle - A Collaborative Team Environment

In order to complete a project and get the desired output, the project team, not the project manager, performs the work that needs to be done. And this team will never be homogeneous. There are completely different individuals in each project team.

The team principle is one of 12 project management principles that offers guidance on creating a collaborative project environment for this project team. This guidance is especially important while applying activities in the team performance domain.

Team Environment

There are three factors that support a collaborative team environment. These factors are team agreements, organizational structures, and processes. In each project, the project team must commit to the behaviors that must be shown throughout the project and the rules that must be followed in all intra-team work at the beginning of the project. this commitment is the first step to creating a collaborative team environment. Thanks to this commitment, team members know what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong, they learn to respect each other's boundaries. 

The version of this commitment that is poured into paper is the team charter. The team charter document is created at the beginning of the project and updated and improved during the project. In order to achieve the goals set out for the project, project teams should come up with the best roadmap together and tailor the organizational structure and project processes accordingly. This tailoring approach is also one of the cornerstones of creating a collaborative environment.

In order to create a collaborative team environment, roles, and responsibilities, actors should be defined and allocated clearly without a doubt. The next step should be creating a safe team environment and supporting the project team psychologically. These goals can only be achieved by continuously getting feedback from the team members.

Psychologically safe work environment

A psychologically safe work environment also contributes to the building process of a collaborative team environment. According to the Herzberg's hygiene theory and Maslow's hierarchy of needs, creating a psychologically safe work environment for a team is the first step for making the team more collaborative.