Project teams: profiles and member perceptions-implications for group support system research and products

Reports on a series of questionnaire surveys in which 165 managers and professionals each described a single recent project. The project team size varied considerably, with a mean of 7.7 members. The team size was usually selected to get the right mix of expertise, to have someone from each affected unit, or both. Most teams met many times, with a mean of 16.5 meetings and a median of 10. The mean project duration was 6.1 months. During that time, respondents engaged in an average of more than one project communication per working day; only 18% of these communications were in formal team meetings. More than half the projects had at least one member from another site, and 29% had half or more of their members from other sites. So, project teams today are already characterized by a good deal of distributed work. Respondents were familiar with the large majority of their team members before the project started. Satisfaction was high on a number of dimensions. Most projects seemed to involve complex design processes rather than a single decision. We discuss the importance of supporting distributed project teams and some implications for the design of group support system research and products