SAE Institute Belgrade

INDIVIDUAL REPORT

elmira Mikljan
Student number: BGD 10155
Course code: 502 Y2 1014
Date of submission: 17 February 2014
Word count: 2071

I hereby declare that I wrote this thesis on my own and without the use of any
other than the cited sources and tools and all explanations that I copied directly or
in their sense are marked as such, as well as that the assignment has not yet
been handed in neither in this nor in equal form at any other official commission.

..
(Date, Place, Signature)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................1
STAGES OF TEAM DEVELOPMENT......................................................................2
ROLES AND CONTRIBUTIONS..............................................................................4
SELF REFLECTION.................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................7
REFERENCE LIST...................................................................................................8
BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
In this paper, I will describe and examine my experience in the team work,
my role in our team and my contribution to the idea development. I will evaluate
the roles of every member of our team, analyse each members performance and
effectiveness of our work, as well. Also, I will try to classify my and my colleagues
roles by Belbins classification of the team roles (Belbin 1981).

Our project goal was to make and develop the business plan for our
fictional company Transportant Entertainment. This was my first time to be
engaged in some collective writing and developing of the mutual idea, and I
learned a lot from this experience. Before we started developing our ideas, I was
very curious to find out whether I am good in the collective, in the teamwork, and
with working with other people with different temperament and ways of thinking. I
learned a lot about project design, teamwork and communication.

STAGES OF TEAM DEVELOPMENT

I will describe my experience in team work through Tuckmans and Jensens
(1977) stages of team development.

- Forming our team

Our team was formed by our teacher, and we couldnt choose people for
our team. Some colleagues I knew more, some less. In this stage, we didnt
choose our leader yet, and we agreed that we should have our first meeting online,
via internet. That idea wasnt good (online communication is recommended for
later stages), and after that we had first face-to-face unofficial meeting, after our
class. We exchanged some general ideas about our work, and I formed some
early estimations about my partners and their future roles. At first, we thought that
we should make a business plan for All in one studio, but soon, we realized that
we need some more unique idea. Luka suggested we should make video games,
and we all agreed, because we realized that each member our team possesses
the necessary knowledge and skills for game development.

-Storming
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At a second meeting, we discussed a lot about goal of our company. We knew we

want to make a video games, but we had a problem with defining which kind of
game we need and where is the niche in the video games market. After a long
discussion, we decided we will make one-person shooter games because they are
very successful on a market and we can earn a lot of money via subscriptions and
level upgrades. My opinion is that we should have more discussions regarding the
market niche, on order to get a more unique idea for the game.
-Norming
In this stage, we set some rules and tasks. We divided our team into three small
groups. Each group got one field to explore Sloba and Luka had to explore the
market and make marketing plan, Nemanja Pribilovic had to develop the Business
Overview, Davor and I had to explore customers and make PEST and SWOT
analysis, and Nemanja Knezevic had to make a financial plan. It seemed that this
strategy is the best.
In this stage, we defined our roles and position in our future company. Since
Nemanja Knezevic has a lot of experience in the creative industry, he would be
CEO and Financial Officer. Also, he would be Creative director as well since he
already worked on similar projects. Davor Gal will be Project Manager and Head of
3D animation because he got a lot of skills regarding this field. Nemanja Pribilovic
and Luka Knezevic are most suitable persons for the programming since they are
web students. The team decided that I should be the PR of our company, and
since I got designing and illustrating skill, I will be the sketch artist. Slobodan
Rankovic got the role of a Head of Audio department, as an Audio production
student.
-Performing
This was the hardest part of this process. There was a high level of anxiety about
getting the job done on time. It turned out that I became the team leader and I was
carryng the whole responsibility about team managing and I had to maintain the
communication between members. Also, it turned out that financials are very hard
area, so I helped Nemanja to deal with it. Unfortunately, we didnt get our
financials before the pitch presentation.
Also, on the day of the pitch presentation, one problem appeared we realized
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that we didnt have our PowerPoint presentation because Luka get very sick and
he couldnt finish it. We had an hour and a half to make new presentation from the
scratch. All team members have given their best to do it. At that moment, I was
very proud of our team because no one has fallen into despair, everyone was
contributing to make a new presentation, and we did it. We learned that we must
always be prepared for unexpected circumstances.
We had a pitch presentation of our business in front of a whole class. We were
aware that we were unprepared for this (we still missed the financial plan), but,
after all, this presentation helped us to improve our work, writings and researches,
so in the end, this turned out to be good for us.
After we realized that the financials are the hardest part of our work, we became
aware that we need good logical and analytical approach to solving this problem.
After two hard-working days, we got complete financial plan. During this stage of
building our idea, some members were not sufficiently committed to work, and that
caused some problems, but every team member was trying to avoid every conflict,
in order to have better outcome. Some members didnt always complete their
tasks on time, so some other team members had to do some extra work, but we
never had conflicts because of that. In this stage, we were aware that the conflicts
had to be avoided.
-Adjourning
We completed our task successfully since we were dedicated to our goal and I am
sure that every member of our team was hard-working and devoted. We worked
very well considering the fact that most of us didnt have experience with
teamwork and making business plans, especially financials.

ROLES AND CONTRIBUTION

Belbin divided team workers into the categories. We didnt have one strict
leader, we were the team with team-centered leadership (Oliva L.M. 1992). All
team members were equally participated in decision-making and finding the
solutions. However, every team needs co-operator, who is some kind of glue
among the members.
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-Nemanja Knezevic
At first, Nemanja had to do financials regarding our business. He was very
dedicated and dutiful member of our team. He was always willing to help me,
answering every question I had. I was in continuous contact with him, discussing
with him about all the current issues and problems. He performed his role
effectively and his contribution to the project is great. Regarding Belbins team
roles definition, in my opinion, Nemanja was monitor evaluator of our team, and
he also took the role of the editor, reviewing others texts.
-Davor Gal
He was also always willing to help. He was a specialist in our team because he is
full of knowledge regarding the video games and industry, very dedicated to his
role, always aware of our goal and someone on whom you can rely.
-Nemanja Pribilovic
He was responsible for our business overview. He was

company

worker/implementer, he was very disciplined and committed to his obligations, but

on the other side, inflexible to the suggestions.
-Luka Ivanovic
He was also company worker, he did his part very well, but he wasnt further
inquired into a progress of the writing of our business plan.
-Slobodan Rankovic
He was our resource investigator. He was full of ideas about our business and
always was exploring new possibilities for our business. I think he is excellent for
our team because he can always provide some useful information, he is very
communicative but it seems he lost his enthusiasm at the end of the process. His
very fluent English helped a lot with our writing.
Regarding our teamwork, the most things went good, but in my opinion, we
should have more appointments, more eye to eye discussions, especially
regarding a market niche and marketing plan. It seems that our business plan is
missing good marketing plan and strategy, due to lack of communication between
members of our team. That is a thing that every member of this team should
improve.

SELF REFLECTION
In the beginning, I had difficulties finding my place and the role in our team.
But soon it turned out that our team needs some kind of a coordinator, the person
who manages the tasks and maintains the communication between team
members. Every team needs a person that is directing the whole process and is
some kind of glue between the parts of the team. I was scheduling the meetings,
sending emails with some useful information, and organizing our workflow. So,
after all, I find myself on very important role in the team. I got the people-oriented
role (Belbin 1993), despite I possess qualities for cerebral roles in the team.
Partially, I was not aware that I possess these qualities, and I am very thankful that
I got this opportunity to be a part of the team, because I learned a lot of stuff about
my qualities. If I use the terminology regarding Johari window technique, I would
say that my blind spot area reduced, which means I became aware of things
about myself that I did not know. This experience is very valuable for me since I
became more self-aware and more confident in front of other people. This task
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motivated

me

even

more

to

work

on

my

self-improvement.

I had no problems with motivation, I was aware of our goal, and I wanted to make
everything in high standard, and I was full of energy to motivate other members to
accomplish our goal together. I motivated and encouraged other team members,
by asking them questions regarding their progress and I tried to be in touch with
every team member. My primary goal was to keep everything together and keep
everyone motivated as well as I was.
Since I have an eye for details and I know how to pay an attention to small
things, I became an editor on my own initiative. So Nemanja and I were checking
other members work, to ensure that content is valid and there are no common
mistakes in writing.
There is also one thing I learned in this process of making this business plan. As I
said above, we had a huge problem with writing our financial plan. I never had an
experience with financials, but I knew that we had to do it, no matter how. I had a
lack of knowledge in this topic, but I had great motivation, so I learned the basics
of financial plan in just two days.
Of course, some things can always be better. In the future work in the team,
I will try to motivate the other members even more, and to be more contributing. I
liked my role of the coordinator, and I will try to improve this newly acquired skill.
I will give my best to explore the idea from the very beginning, I will be even more
informed and I will try to encourage interpersonal relations between team
members.

CONCLUSION
We had a really great opportunity to work in the team, and we get very
valuable experience working in the team and developing some mutual idea. We
had one common goal, and we tried to reach it together. Some questions in our
group remained unresolved, such as perfect niche for our business, and in my
opinion, we needed more brainstorming to solve this. However, this was a great
lesson for all of us, and I am pretty sure that our next collaboration will be much
more effective. There are still some aspects I wish to improve: enhance my
analytical approach, encourage and motivate more other members of my team and
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improve organisational skills.

Thanks to this self-reflection essay, I evaluated our activities and I
immersed myself even more into analyzing the mechanisms for developing
effective teamwork. I became aware that there is no ideal team and every
teamwork has its own ups and downs, but this obstacle can be easily overcome
with motivated and dedicated team members. In my opinion, the keys to the
success are good communication, motivation, mutual engagement and high level
of responsibility as well. Working in the team improved my self-awareness,
communication, organization and management skills.

REFERENCE LIST
Belbin R. M. (1981) Management Teams: Why They Succeed or Fail. A
Butterworth-Heinemann.
Belbin, R.M. (1993) Team Roles at Work. Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford.
Tuckman, B. & Jensen, M. (1977) Stages of Small Group Development. Group and O.

Oliva, L. M. (1992) Partners not Competitors. London. Idea Group Publishing.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Belbin R. M. (1981) Management Teams: Why They Succeed or Fail. A
Butterworth-Heinemann Title.
Tuckman, B. & Jensen, M. (1977) Stages of Small Group Development. Group and O.

Oliva, L. M. (1992) Partners not Competitors. London. Idea Group Publishing.

Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing - Understanding the Stages of

Team Formation http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_86.htm (no
date) (Accessed: 16 February 2015).

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