The Performance Evaluation of a Team of Five Members in a Business Unit - Coursework Example

Business Idea & Opportunities Individual Reflective Report Executive summary Sustainable growth of any business is directly related to the good performance of the business execution team. The report focuses on the performance evaluation of a team of five members in a business unit. The business unit is formed to design a new wireless earphone for the market. The main objective of our study is to evaluate the performance of the entire team before, during and after the implementation of the business idea. According to the findings of this study, the team has several weaknesses. The major drawback of this team is its inadequate size. The team is very small than the number of job roles they have to perform. To eliminate this weakness, my team has taken the Bellman test to find out their roles and responsibilities. The team members have performed more than one role to execute the product development on time. Another weakness is my language barrier for which I have to take a language training. Table of Contents Introduction 3 Application of Lean start-up methodology 4 Customer development 4 Implementation of the theories of creativity 5 Opportunity spotting 6 Overall team performance evaluation 6 Conclusion 7 Introduction This study is based on the team performance during the module of designing and introducing a new product in the market. This study presents different approaches to evaluate the performance of the team while discussing a new business idea of wireless earphone. My team has total of five members that includes 3 Scottish girls, one girl from Nigeria and one team co-ordinator. The team performance has been evaluated before, during and after implementation of the business idea. The purpose of the report is to evaluate the performance of the team in each stage of the product innovation and the product development. The report has described all the method my team has applied in various steps of product innovation and development and their performances throughout each step of the execution. Application of Lean start-up methodology The lean start-up method helps an organisation to create and manage start-ups of a desired product and introducing the product to the customers as soon as possible (Gustafsson and Qvillberg, 2012). This theory can be applied to any individual, team or organisations, which are looking forward to introduce any new product or service in the market. In this study the business unit has organised several meetings to come up with new ideas for an innovative product. In our first meeting the team members have suggested four types of product ideas. To reduce the chaos, the team has decided to develop a minimum viable product (MVP) (Gustafsson and Qvillberg, 2012). This has helped us to find out the demand of the product. Distribution of the research work for each product within the team was helpful in this stage. It helped the team to minimize the time to find out the importance of each product and to find out whether they should build the product or not. Few members were also responsible to conduct survey regarding consumer point of view (Alvarez, 2014). It also helped us to ensure that which product will give them a sustainable business. After the research we came up with the idea of wireless earphone in the next meeting. During the implementation of the idea of wireless earphone, the team has worked on the obstacles of the product as well, such as the design of charging case and chances of misplacing the product. They also have discussion about the design of the ear bud so that it can fit each and every individual. Customer development Customer development methodology helps a company to discover and validate a right market for the idea. It also assists the team to build the right product features as per the need of the customer (Cooper and Vlaskovits, 2010). Customer development can be done through customer discovery, validating the customer, customer creation and then product building (Thompson, 2014). It is a parallel process of the product development (Alvarez, 2014). In this stage our team has decided to take opinions directly from the consumers. They have divided consumers into various age categories and conducted surveys from each category to get the idea of the required features for wireless earphone. Few members from the team have investigated the products of major competitors in the market to understand the latest technology preferred by the consumers. One team member was responsible for evaluating all the collected data and preparing a data chart. This process helped my team to decide upon the design of the product and the required features. Therefore, we have decided to customize the features to offer the consumers a better product. This survey procedure also helped the team to understand the potential customers for this product and therefore helped them to decide about the volume and cost of the production. Implementation of the theories of creativity Creativity is required to produce something new and valuable (Runco, 2014). A team needs to be creative in terms of developing new product features and the brand value. The team already has a clear idea about customer preferences regarding the features for a wireless earphone. Now their main objective was to show their creativity to materialize those innovative ideas as a high performing product features. Our product and brand name creation follows the creative cognition approach (Runco, 2014). In this approach, the team generally develop an imaginary structure of any product and then they use that structure to generate creative ideas about the design of the product. This approach also can be used to decide about the positioning of the product in the market (Smith and Yang, 2004). In our research procedure, the team has already found out the potential obstacle of the product and they also have recognised the competitor. Therefore, the team has utilized the gathered knowledge to design best fitted attributes to the product so that it can eliminate all those obstacles. These new features are rubber inside the earphone so that they fit in everyone’s ear and innovative charging cable. After giving a structure to their imaginary product they have decided upon a brand name and company name by considering the major features of the product. This decision has been taken by the team leader but the suggestion of the team members was equally important. Opportunity spotting Understanding the available opportunity is an important part before entering the market (Belbin, 2012). A large corporate-sized advertising is not always necessary to create an advantageous position in the market. It is essential to keep an eye on the market to find out relevant opportunity (Entin and Entin, 2014). Our team has decided to create a prototype of the product to have an idea about the opportunity in the market. They have selected the trade fair to introduce the prototype to the consumers. Trade fair would be the best place to find the right set of consumers and it will also help them to create a demand for their product (Runco, 2014). Our last team meeting was totally focused on the launching of the prototype in the trade fair. They have discussed about all the required articles for a proper presentation of their product in the trade fair. The responsibility of collecting all the products to create a stall in the trade fair was equally divided among the team. Overall team performance evaluation Before starting the product designing, the team has distributed the responsibility to all the team members. Each of our members has decided their role and responsibility through bellman test (Bellman, 1986). This test helps the team to understand their strength and weaknesses and therefore suggest them their best suitable position in the team (Entin and Entin, 2014). By taking this test the team was clear about their job roles before implementation of the business idea. I, as a team coordinator, was mainly responsible for generating the new ideas and designing prototype. Halima was working as a monitor and evaluator. In this phase her role was to create all the research paper and evaluating all the data. In this stage of implementation of the idea all of the five members worked as a team-worker. All of them have given their input in the product decision and product evaluation in the first stage of the process. During the implementation of the idea everyone divided the work as a team-worker and resource investigator. In this level I have played the role of co-ordinator as well. Apart from team worker Halima also played the role of shaper as she was responsible for creating all the charts for data collection of the whole procedure. Katie played the role of the evaluator in this phase. She has evaluated all the major competitions of the market to understand the features offered by them. I, as the decision maker of the prototype design, have worked on all the loopholes and obstacles of this idea during implementation. During this stage we have played the role of implementer apart from their individual role. We have successfully implemented the business idea with all the required features. Now we needed to find out the right opportunity in the market to position the prototype. In this stage all the member worked as a completer of the project. Each of them was equally responsible to plant a stall in the trade fair. I was mainly responsible for an innovative brand name and the price structure of the prototype. Every team has its own strength and weaknesses but an effective team can identify its weaknesses and balance it with the strength of the team (Finke, Ward and Smith, 1996). The number of members in the team was less than the job role. Therefore, there is a possibility that various task will not be completed timely. For that reason the entire team worked on multiple job roles so that they can assure timely completion of the project with the proper utilization of their skills. Our team also have some weaknesses to work on. I was not very good in his communication skill. He was facing language barrier with the team members as the accent of other team members is very strong. As a coordinator of the team I should have clearly delivered his ideas to the team member. Conclusion The innovation team of wireless earphone is very efficient in their approach toward the implementation of the idea. All the team members are multitasking and they have applied all the necessary theories to get their job done. The team has balanced all their major weaknesses with the strength of the team. My language barrier should be minimized by regular communication and proper language training. Reference List Alvarez, C., 2014. Lean Customer Development: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy. New York: OReilly Media, Inc. Belbin, R. M., 2012. Team Roles at Work. Burlington: Routledge. Bellman, R. E., 1986. The Bellman Continuum: A Collection of the Works of Richard E. Bellman. New York: World Scientific. Cooper, B. and Vlaskovits, P., 2010. The Entrepreneurs Guide to Customer Development: A cheat Sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany. London: CustDev. Entin, E. E. and Entin, E. B., 2014. Measures for Evaluation of Team Processes and Performance in Experiments and Exercises. [pdf] Aptima, Inc. Available at: [Accessed 15 December 2014]. Finke, R. A., Ward, T. B. and Smith, S. M., 1996. Creative Cognition: Theory, research and Application. [pdf] The MIT Press. Available at: [Accessed 15 December 2014]. Gustafsson, A. and Qvillberg, J., 2012. Implementing Lean Startup Methodology- An Evaluation. [pdf] Chalmers University Of Technology. Available at: [Accessed 15 December 2014]. Runco, M. A., 2014. Creativity: Theories and Themes: Research, Development, and Practice. New York: Elsevier. Smith, R. E. and Yang, X., 2004. Toward a general theory of creativity in advertising: Examining the role of divergence. Marketing Theory, 4(1-2), pp. 31-58. Thompson, 2014. Making the Team: a Guide for Managers. New Delhi: Pearson Education India. Read More