Group work management - theories, practice and software

Group work management is a complex of tools and activities that are intended to bond a group of people into effective team that can achieve common goals. It is also a process that was widely studied by experts of different branches, because good group work is indispensable condition for successful performance of any project. In the result, studying experts concluded that any group works in accordance to certain objective rules. Main groupwork theory says that before a group of people can achieve stage of highest groupwork efficiency it should go through several stages. Different groupwork theories consider work in different dimensions , so stages of group working development can be called in different manner. Issues of team building and development are referred to different aspects of teamwork. They include psychological environment in which group works, organizational and professional factors of groupwork etc. Well-known groupwork theories closely learn all these aspects, factors and explain how to overcome all issues and attain state of the best performance. Group work management software can considerably reduce time spent in organizing your team and planning activities. Let's consider main groupwork aspects and how that software can be applied.

According to groupwork theories any team, after formation, should go through troublesome stage when interpersonal conflicts can block work progress. On this stage participants need to elaborate acceptable behavior and to find common language. Role of groupwork manager is to understand what tasks can be done successfully first, without being blocked by interpersonal conflicts, and what tasks need a discussion and can be left for better time. That software (e.g. VIP Task Manager ) can help team members to focus and concentrate on their tasks - people that are able to review their working plans freely can better express their opinion and suggest improvements.

General groupwork theory says that a team should work according to rules and schedules agreed with participants - this helps to achieve higher efficiency. Undoubtedly, when a team works according to generally accepted and accessible schedule - team members are in touch with group work flow and this mobilizes them. Traditional on-wall paper schedule can help, however it is inconvenient and slow to update. VIP Task Manager is task and time scheduling and execution tracking groupware that offers the Scheduler (Calendar) mode which can be accessed by multiple team members to view, plan and edit their tasks.

The basis of effective teamwork is effective collaboration. If there is no normal collaboration - this group cannot be a real team, it is rather a group of individuals.  Effective collaboration hails from good organization and healthy workgroup climate. To ensure normal group work special team collaboration software can be used. VIP Task Manager is software that helps teams not to fall apart. VIP Task Manager will mobilize and organize your team, so they will have possibility to prioritize their activity by focusing on urgent tasks. VIP Task Manager can work as journal that saves all project performance information that can be used for analyzing and improvement of teamwork. That journal shows who and how have performed each task, how well business objectives were met and so on.

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