Project Management and Teamwork

Teamwork and projects are at the heart of the approach Karl Smith uses in teaching students of all levels. While knowing that it isn't easy for students to work effectively in project teams or for faculty to organize and manage them, Smith has been convinced through personal experience in the classroom that the potential for extraordinary work from teams makes it worth the effort. In writing Project Management and Teamwork, his goals for the reader were for them to understand the dynamics of team development and interpersonal problem solving, to identify strategies for accelerating the development of true team effectiveness, to understand the critical dimensions of project scope, time, and cost management, to understand critical technical competencies in project management, and to explore a variety of "best practices" including anticipating, preventing, and overcoming barriers to project success. The assumption is that projects and teamwork are a central part of engineering work in the world outside the classroom.