Project Management and Teamwork
Smith, K. A. (2000)
New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Pp. 119
ISBN: 0-07-012296-2

This book is written for first-year engineering students, a group the author, Karl A. Smith, has taught for more than 20 years, in addition to teaching about project management and teamwork to higher level undergraduates, graduate students, government officials, and people from the corporate world. Among Smith’s other books are Active Learning: Cooperation in the College Classroom, 1998, co-authored with Roger and David Johnson.

The book consists of 10 chapters. In the first, Smith highlights the place of project management and teamwork in engineering. For instance, he cites research that found engineering design is a social process and that, “Design team failure is usually due to failed team dynamics” (p. 3).

Chapter 2 focuses on what makes for a successful learning team. For instance, a successful team is diverse, has shared leadership roles, rather than a strong leader, and discusses, decides, and does real work together, rather than discussing, deciding, and then delegating. While much in this chapter will be familiar to those who are familiar with the Johnsons’ book, there are new ideas as well.

The focus of Chapter 3 lies on teamwork skills. Smith emphasizes that groups should not only accomplish their tasks but also work on becoming better at collaborating. Among the areas addressed in the chapter are group norms, communication, leadership, decision making, conflict resolution, and teamwork problems.

Readers not involved in engineering may find some of the book’s remaining chapters of less interest, as they tend to focus specifically on the management of engineering projects. For example, Chapter 9 deals with project management software. However, projects are increasingly common in all areas of education these days, and many of the ideas Smith presents have some general relevance. Also, it is always useful to compare how things are done in different fields.

Chapter 4 begins with a definition of what a project is and then discusses project planning and the life cycle of a project. The next chapter concerns project management, and includes a useful general discussion of old and new paradigms in workplace organization and college teaching. Chapter 6 describes methods of scheduling projects. Chapter 7 is of general relevance, treating the topic of project monitoring. Included in the chapter are tips on conducting meetings, as well as an instrument used by Boeing to monitor group effectiveness and an instrument used by Xerox to analyze the talk that goes on among team members. The chapter also contains a discussion on old and new ways of thinking about quality. Among the old ways are thinking that, “Competition motivates people to do better work” and that, “For every winner there’s a loser”. In contrast, new ways of thinking about quality consider that, “Cooperation helps people do more effective work” and that, “Everyone can win.”

The topic of Chapter 8 is project management and documentation. Again, the benefits of group interaction are brought out. For instance, students are urged to keep journals and to share entries with another student. One Web-based means of sharing Smith mentions is the Personal Electronic Notebook with Sharing (PENS) . The website describes it thusly: The concept of an electronic or digital engineering design notebook used by designers to capture information for re-use and sharing is becoming reality in many different flavors. The development of PENS responds to observed designers' needs for a lightweight tool that is facile enough to compete with paper notebooks in functionality. As design information is entered into PENS in real-time, the PENS information web grows; as it grows, selections can be incrementally published for sharing with collaborators over the Internet's World-Wide Web.

The book’s chapters end with questions, exercises, and references. The questions call for students to recall and summarize material in the chapter, while the exercises provide opportunities to connect ideas to students’ own experiences and to apply them. Group and individual reflections appear at various points in the chapters.

In conclusion, I was impressed by the way that Smith helps students see the big picture in regards to project management and teamwork. I could see from the book that he practices what he preaches by fostering cooperation among students as they learn about engineering and about larger lessons for life. While the book has the greatest application to those who teach engineering, teachers of any subject will find useful ideas about how to enhance student-student interaction, in particular in project work.