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Aims to present a team effectiveness analysis of software development teams and one means of improving the effectiveness of software development teams in quite an innovative manner, namely, by forming teams based on who can work effectively together.

The team roles described by R. Meredith Belbin are utilized to improve the effectiveness of software development teams The procedure used in these analyses consists of: finding teams that indicate a commitment to, or interest in, participating in an analysis of their team; having all team members fill out the Belbin Self‐perception Inventory in order to gather data for analysis; interviewing the leader of the team in order to obtain an independent analysis and verification of the self‐perception data; analyzing the self‐perception data, looking for trends in the data from which subjective assessments can be made; Comparing the Belbin analysis with the interview information, identifying similarities and differences between the two, thus providing verification of the Belbin analysis.

Analyses of software development teams from within the industry demonstrate that Belbin's roles and the Belbin self‐perception inventory can be used to recognize important positive and negative features of a team. Thus, positive features can be encouraged, and negative features can be avoided or remedied.

This paper would be useful to managers and team leaders of software development industries to analyze their team and to bring out superior efforts of forming the team to get the work done.

Team role preference, as formulated by Meredith Belbin, and cognitive style are both rooted in personality. As a consequence, it should be possible to successfully hypothesise certain relationships between team role preferences and cognitive style, or one or more of its components. To test this idea, data was collected by administering the Kirton Adaption Innovation inventory and Cattell’s 16PF personality questionnaire to a group of undergraduate students (n = 183) who were reading a mixed engineering and business degree. This paper reports correlations which substantiate some of the postulated relationships. The findings, which suggest that the ideal Belbin team contains a balanced mix of adaptors, innovators and bridgers, give a new perspective to the Belbin team role model, and should provide some guidance to those who seek to build and operate “Belbinesque” teams.

Following the publication in our last issue of the TRAINING DESIGN ALGORITHM by the Industrial Training Research Unit there have been enquiries about the several specific techniques mentioned in it. In later issues we shall be dealing in greater detail with training and learning techniques; in the meantime here is a more comprehensive statement on DISCOVERY METHOD presented by Dr Meredith Belbin, whose name is the one most closely associated with the method. Later this year we shall be publishing several articles demonstrating the principles in action.

The Industrial Training Research Unit is Britain's only research centrse of any size looking into problems of occupational training and is grant‐aided by the DE. ITRU has tended to concentrate its activities on training for manual work, on which it speaks with unique authority. Much of its work is concerned with the retraining of adults, so much so that at one time it was called The Industrial Retraining Unit. Its modus operandi is such as to appeal to practising trainers. Its work is based firmly on research but its aim is to solve practical problems of training encountered inside companies and it is this blend of practical experience with the investigational approach which makes its work so interesting. Any book by these two authors on the subject of training would command respect and attention, but one on the problems of retraining adults represents a milestone. This is the field in which they have specialised for a long time, in which they have an accumulation of hitherto unpublished information. The book describes many actual investigations and training exercises; the authors analyse the exercises, draw their conclusions and, to some extent, deduce certain basic principles. This anecdotal approach makes for easy reading; the deducing of conclusions makes for information which can be applied by the reader. The topics which the authors talk about are those which practising trainers will see as the real issues. All this results in a most exciting and usable book, unique in its field. With the permission of the authors and the publisher we now follow with edited extracts from the chapter which summarises the main conclusions arrived at in the earlier chapters. This is not the complete chapter — only about half of it. We have slightly changed the style of presentation. At this moment there are no agreed principles of adult retraining. We have underscored parts of the text to highlight statements which might reasonably be taken as fundamental principles in this aspect of training. This is our idea, not the idea of the authors whose claims are more modest.

Observes that a group of seven undergraduate consultancy project team members, studying in the final year of a business degree, greatly benefited from utilizing Meredith Belbin’s team role theory. Notes that Belbin’s approach was particularly useful in identifying strengths and weaknesses; enabling tasks to be allocated based on competence. Also that a method for retrospective analysis of the team’s performance was developed using Belbin’s framework. In some cases the perception of self differed significantly from the observed actions and behaviours. Points out that each team member completed Belbin’s psychometric test at the outset of the project and that these results were then tested through peer assessment at the end of the project, using a hypothetico‐deductive method. Uses an analogous framework to illustrate the level of cohesion and team role balance necessary for the team to perform effectively. Concludes that the learning potential of students can be maximized by enabling them to experience and reflect on the realities of team working for themselves.

This monograph summarises the key influences of leadership behaviour on the transformation process associated with creation of an effective and high performing team. It clarifies the key factors that are relevant to a team at each stage of the transformation process and the leadership roles that each team member can play. The role of an organisation's senior management is considered both in terms of the impact it has on the transformation process within specific teams and in terms of creating the necessary organisational environment to make effective teams the norm. Some reasons why senior management behaviour is often perceived as inconsistent and unhelpful are explored. Specific recommendations are made to help senior managers to adapt their behaviour, and in so doing become more context‐sensitive to the needs of the environment as it changes. Some tools and techniques are presented that have been found in practice to help senior managers adapt their behaviour to that most appropriate at a given time, and to create the organisational infrastructure needed to make effective teams the organisational norm rather than the exception. A case study is presented illustrating the networked nature of leadership and the culture change associated with making effective teams “the way we do things around here.”