No abstract

The sub-process of selecting team members, as in people not organizations, is not applied. It is however a fact that interconnections and boundaries are formed between individuals within a team and teams as a whole within the project and these cause complexity. Complexity characteristics have been identified and if project practitioners understand how these affect the process of selecting team members they will be able to manage its affects. A study was conducted with construction project practitioners from six organizations, which included questionnaires and interviews and investigated the level of implementation of team member selection and the level of actions taken / techniques used to manage the effects of complexity of interconnections. The results concur with previous findings that existing techniques are not implemented but also confirm that the process is not considered as means to manage the effects of complexity. Based on these findings a framework was developed which not only promotes the process and a number of the existing techniques but also enables practitioners to take appropriate action(s) for the management of the effects of complexity of interconnections using its characteristics.

The process of structuring teams in projects is not being implemented, and practitioners have lost confidence in the process. In order to improve the current status, there is a need for a major rethink, one that will enable the structuring of teams/complex adaptive systems. Therefore, using deductions drawn from research results, regarding the implementation of the process and the effects of complexity, a tentative proposal for a Finite Structural approach is made for setting up and testing the structure of teams. This is done by integrating a number of progressive theories not only from the field of organisation design but also from engineering, physics, and psychology, with theories such as social network theory, actor-network theory, finite element analysis, complexity, clustering, and cross functional team behaviours. This chapter presents the above and throws the gauntlet for discussion and improvement of the approach that will enable project managers and others to improve the process of structuring of teams.