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To explore the relationships between emotions and overall team processes and task performance.

The work begins with a literature review of the major studies performed on emotions and their affects on teams. This study then specifically surveys a group of information technology student teams at various stages of a term‐long project to determine their level of feelings in 15 separate emotions at each stage. Also measured are effects of emotions on attitudes towards team processes. Regression analysis was used to measure the significance of several hypotheses.

Overall findings specifically measured the five hypotheses. It was found that team emotions at the start of the project are more positive than negative. Negative emotions grow more than positive over the life of the project. Emotions show increased intensity over the life of the project. Initial emotions did not significantly affect overall team processes. Final emotions somewhat affected overall team processes.

The small sample size does limit generalizations but the work can serve as a framework for more extensive and industry situated studies.

The work suggests issues related to the impact and evolution of emotions on team projects. Practitioners can begin to focus on efforts that can improve emotions and potentially overall team success.

There is little work done on the evolution of emotions and their effects on team processes. The paper begins the dialogue on an important aspect of team dynamics.

Sustainable building development involves several stakeholders, team participants and their fulfilment can affect the performance and outcome of succeeding construction development. The effect of the individual or human component is one of the most desperate reasons for the realisation of any progress in the building sector. Organisations are developing an increasing number of project teams to meet diverse organisational goals as they acknowledge the value and importance of project teams. However, in order to ensure that the project team achieves positive results, management, particularly the project manager, must focus on crucial elements such as team satisfaction. Project success can be influenced by team satisfaction. The project leader usually oversees and manages the team, organising and managing project activities between stakeholders and other team members. The study found that gratitude, enhanced morale, increased responsibility, putting in extra effort and job quality are all reasons why team satisfaction might affect a construction project's success.

Growing emphasis on meeting client needs and improving project performance within the construction industry has led to increasing use of fully integrated “design and build” (D&B) construction project teams. Advocates of the D&B system contend that integrating design and construction this way leads to a seamless procurement process, improved team relationships, and a more efficiently delivered product. This article reports on research which explored the operational efficiency of such integrated project teams. The findings suggest that despite the benefits of integration, cultural and professional interfaces remain which impair team performance and undermine structural change management protocols. This effectively leaves the team operating as work‐groups in a similar way as they would under a traditionally procured contract, with the construction team excluded from the change management process. A methodology is proposed for exploring these discontinuities in detail, and addressing intra‐work‐group conflicts which threaten the continued development of D&B within the sector.

I was responsible for delivering a Radio Systems Development program. The program totalling over A$20 million was undertaken in the country NSW, Australia, over a three‐year time period, using the existing human resources of the NSW Police in a virtual team environment.

At the beginning of the program, a framework was provided for managing the program. The structure used in the program was a relatively unstructured one: informal communications was supported and project implementation was reliant on trust, cooperation and teamwork. Well‐proven project management and team management concepts were applied, some worked, but some didn’t.

The program was reviewed following its completion. Ideas from various stakeholders were sought and analysed in terms of: what went right and why, what went wrong and why, what could be done better, and any issues which may help on another project.

The program was reviewed following its completion. Ideas from various stakeholders were sought and analysed in terms of: what went right and why, what went wrong and why, what could be done better, and any issues which may help on another project.

The authors analyze surveys completed by 181 members of 59 project teams from 57 hospitals. Results indicate that members of high‐cooperation teams were more likely to communicate informally; spend time brainstorming, exchanging project‐related information, and receiving performance feedback; positively evaluate the status of their project; and have positive feelings about their participation on the project team. Cooperation levels were highest when team leaders clearly explained project objectives and team member responsibilities; team leaders confronted conflicts among team members and worked to resolve those conflicts; team members clearly understood project objectives, responsibilities, and rewards; and team members did not have reservations about the project and its outcomes. Results also suggested that, in some groups, active involvement by senior managers negatively affected cooperation levels. This result may reflect a deference in some groups to the authority of senior management.

Two issues which confront today’s managers are diversity and teams. The contradictory nature of these two terms, in the form of a diverse team, makes it appropriate that the role of many traditional project management tools and techniques be examined. This article describes how the leadership of a diverse team was able to successfully accomplish a major project on time and under budget. They used traditional project management tools and techniques but modified them to fit the requirements of the team. One primary area for focus was on identifying behaviors all team members should exhibit in order to for the project to be successful. After the behaviors were identified, applied behavior analysis was used to reinforce the desired behaviors. By focusing on behaviors which built trust and encouraged open communications, the team was able to take advantage of the diverse experience and backgrounds of all team members. This allowed the team to push decision making well down into the organization, motivate all team members around the objectives of the project and develop flexible processes which were enhanced as the project moved forward. This article attempts to describe and explain the major lessons the team felt they learned for this project.

Management and scholars have been searching for the determinants of project team performance for many years. Individual characteristics and intra‐team processes are most often hypothesized to influence team performance. To date, though, we still do not really understand why some teams perform better than other teams. Studies have provided mixed findings and inconclusive results. The study described in this article continues the search for variables that influence project team performance. The findings provide support for an increasingly, albeit controversial, discussion occurring within human resource circles, concerning the impact of top performers on team performance.

The authors report on their findings from an ongoing seven‐year research project on the intersection of entrepreneurship, marketing and technology. The focus of their research is to identify factors that lead to better, faster and less expensive new product and service development. The present study investigates new product development practices in high‐technology small‐to‐medium enterprises (SMEs), including electronics and computer, biotechnology, military software, space, and electronic machinery companies. Gathering data from 60 new product development projects, the authors found that successful project teams perform certain practices better than unsuccessful ones. These include project visioning, process proficiency, management support, documentation systems, established project deadlines, team processes, and communication. Further, the authors identified critical success factors in the new product development projects as process proficiency, effective filing system, an established project deadline, information coding, and reduced formal communication within teams.

The inherent variability on process times and demand are the factors that prevent the efficient application of lean philosophy in multi-project product development (PD) environments. Considering this variability, a hybrid push–pull project control system is developed, and value stream costing (VSC) analysis is performed to reflect the relation between project lead time, capacity and project cost. The assessment of the push/pull project control on lead time improvement and long-term savings on capacity have been aimed with the proposed complete design structure.

In a team-based structure, formed through clustering, push control techniques for planning tasks within cross-functional teams and pull control techniques for planning tasks between cross-functional teams are developed. The final step evaluates the proposed structure through VSC and long-term savings have been pointed out, especially in terms of freed-up capacity. For the validation of the proposed methodology, an office furniture manufacturing firm’s PD department has been considered and the performance of the hybrid system has been observed through simulation experiments and based on the simulation results, the lean system is evaluated by VSC.

The results of simulation experiments show a superior performance of the proposed hybrid push/pull project control mechanism under different settings of cycle time between projects or shortly project cycle time, dispatching rules within teams and variability levels. The results of the Box-Score (tool to apply VSC) indicate increased capacity in the long term to add extra projects during the planning period with the same project lead time and without additional cost.

Although extensive simulation experiments have been performed to quantify the effect of project control structure and positive results have been reported on lead time and cost, the proposed design structure has not been tested in all existing PD environments.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, the quantification of the effect of hybrid project control with VSC is the first attempt to be applied in lean PD projects.

Conclusions flowing from an investigation of the literature together with the results of two recent research studies suggest that the relationship quality between the client representative (CR), the design team and the team undertaking construction management activities is a major factor governing construction time performance (CTP). While the managerial performance of the manager of the construction team was found to be a pivotal factor, the interaction between the CR and the construction management team was found to be crucial in facilitating good CTP, i.e. achieving a fast build rate. One interesting and valuable insight gained from the research studies reviewed in the present paper suggests that selection of a CR should be based on the capacity of the CR to gain the confidence of the project team. The CR characteristics which are significantly associated with good CTP are also discussed. It is proposed that these provide useful selection guidelines for appointing the appropriate person or team to represent the client's interests within the project coalition.