Teams: Essentials of Team Building

Training & Development, Feb, 2001 by Jan Hayes

Teams: Essentials of Team Building, software, 2000, Summa Interactives: www.summainteractives.com. Purchase US$625 for single workstation with multiple-user license. Other material: none.

From its opening question, "Is this a team or a work group?" to its diagnosing of process issues, Teams: Essentials of Team Building gives users plenty to think about as they tackle difficult issues.

The program is divided into three segments: teambuilding, managing the process, and an exercise. The first segment introduces the pyramid of goals, roles, processes, and relationships. After reviewing key advantages and disadvantages, the program examines how to know whether to build a team. A memory game that matches audio clips to stages of development tests your knowledge.

The second segment covers managing the teambuilding process: understanding change, recognizing and modifying ineffective behaviors, and selecting members. The program describes the process adequately, but its producers miss an opportunity to create more substantive start-up activities.

The last segment is a review and final exercise that asks you to assemble the best four-person team. Starting with a scenario and eight possible candidates, you must uncover information about each person by reviewing facts concealed at their simulated workstations.

From a technical perspective, the CD-ROM is easy to load and offers valuable features, including bookmarking and the capability to return to the main menu and skip segments. Likewise, the content in the video segments is right on target, and the actors are believable.

Recommendation: Teams: Essentials of Team Building works best as an introduction to team concepts and a practical tool for selecting team members. The program focuses on the conceptual foundation for high-performance teams, and, more important, is fun to use.

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