How We Improve Our Team Dynamics
Team Dynamics, explained by Kurt Lewin — a social psychologist and change management expert, is a concept of understanding the individuals that make up a team, a method of exploring behavior, and the reasons for that behavior. Team dynamics are the unconscious, psychological forces that influence the direction of a team’s behavior and performance.
A team with a good dynamic tends to have team members who trust each other, have mutual understanding, constructive, and demonstrate self-corrective behavior. A good team dynamic will improve overall team performance and get the best out of individual team members. Otherwise, bad team dynamics can cause unproductivity and may prevent the team from achieving its goals.
At the early Sprint, our team — SekolahKu/Santuy.in, have some difficulties in meeting the goals. We had a slow work pace and some of the goals were not achieved. We are a little bit behind that we couldn’t get to the Sprint Review. But what’s done is done. From those issues, we choose to learn and grow together.
Here’s how we solve our problem and what we do to improve our Team Dynamics.
Time Management
The first thing we need to cater to is our time management. We tried doing our work a couple of days before the deadline — not the night before. Then we also tried to do our work in small chunks every day rather than doing everything in a day. From those changes, we notice that we start to get more into the flow and able to solve more issues and bugs.
Build communication & Address problems early on
The next thing we’re aware of was the lack of communication we had. So we decided that we need to communicate more. Whether it is about the tasks, other schoolwork, or other personal issues. Every time we faced a problem, we’re encouraged to address it with others right away. And everyone is so helpful. Special thanks to my Front-end buddies, Rifqi and Hanrichie who’s always helping me with the tests and debugging :) Also Ilham and Ocit too!
We also find it helpful to use Gitlab Webhooks in Discord, so we’re always updated on what everyone else is doing. And when someone is doing a merge request, we can give them a review quickly. Plus, we can also get motivated every time we see someone is being productive 🤣.
Team Bonding
Another thing that I’m grateful for being in this team is how uplifting everyone is. They are sooooooo funny and chill. Although we haven’t got to meet each other in person because of the Corona situation :( we still get to have fun via countless random-aimless-hilarious conversations through online chats-calls-meets. Thanks to them, everything’s become fun and bearable.
Achieving good team dynamics was not a smooth path for us. But we learn day by day, and we can see some improvements to our team performance little by little. We ended up being able to complete more tasks, and the next thing we know is that we’re finally eligible for the next Sprint Review, which is great! Super thankful for this team and I hope you can learn something from us ❤
References
- https://www.deakinco.com/media-centre/news/6-strategies-for-managing-and-improving-team-dynamics
- https://www.notredameonline.com/resources/leadership-and-management/understanding-the-importance-of-team-dynamics/
- https://davidbridgeman.medium.com/the-6-characteristics-of-effective-teams-as-revealed-through-escape-rooms-12fe515df53f
