What is a "Team" ?

Working in teams is essential for running IT projects successfully. But what distinguishes a group from a team? First of all a team is a working group assembled for a longer time to accomplish a goal. The performance of a team is more than the sum of performances of the individual team members. Its members communicate face to face, have respect to each other, avoid any kind of team killer phrases and do not work in ivory towers. The working style of the team can be characterized as cooperative interaction and a collective spirit of responsiblity. In the daily work the boundaries of roles like "the specialist" or "the integrator" as well as disciplinal hierarchies or grades like "junior" or "senior" skilled members are resolved and melt. The team is driven by team spirit and a strong group cohesiveness. Teams often have rituals and renounce vanity fair and jealousy. Seeing that most failed projects fail because of communication problems and for social reasons and very, very seldom because of technical reasons it is more than necessary to form, establish and support the team sense. Unfortunately you are never sure if a working group will emerge to a real team. But if it forms to be a team .. the probability of finishing the project successfully increases dramatically. And: Working in teams makes just pure fun!