INTEGRATED PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROJECT TEAMS

Integrated project teams have been demonstrated to have very favorable impacts of development projects. The integration of people with widely divergent backgrounds, education, and experience can be challenging. People who have worked side by side within a company for years may be surprised by the difficulties they encounter the first time they are asked to be a part of an integrated project team.

The Ten-P Paradigm™ for product development requires integration of team members from a wide variety of backgrounds. Each of the functional units has its own vocabulary. Some words are used in more than one organization but have very different meanings in the different disciplines. Beyond vocabulary, the functional organizations are likely to have disparate goals and objectives, dissimilar processes, varying cycles of stability and feverish activity, and diverse norms and reward systems. If ever there was an environment destined to foster conflict, this is it. How, then, is the project manager supposed to integrate the team? In the Ten-P Paradigm™ for product development, conflict is not a dirty word. Instead, conflict within an Integrated Project Team (IPT) is a source of energy to fuel the product development engine.

Individuals deal with conflict in ways that are consistent with their interests in the issue, their interests in relationships, their interests in their reputation, and in the interests of their own self esteem. Responding to these complex motives, individuals may choose to respond to a particular conflict by avoiding it all together, by smoothing over the differences, by bargaining with their adversary, by attempting to force their own view, or by entering into a sincere problem solving effort. The task of management is to recognize each of these tactics, determine the relevance of the conflict to the project and the project team, and to maneuver the team to more suitable behavior when appropriate.