Create a multi-disciplinary team

Gather your project information

Using the project brief as a basis, review the objectives and purpose and think about what team members will be needed to deliver on them. Think about what phase the project is currently in, and how long you will need to keep the team together.

Remember that team members aren't likely to all be committed to the project 100% of the time but their allocation to the project will increase or decrease as required.

Determine the roles that will need to be filled

You will need to identify the areas of expertise required to address the objectives of the project. This should be a diverse range of people in technical roles, subject matter expert roles, and design roles.

Consider people in the following core roles:

• Product Manager: Oversees the development and strategy of a product, ensuring it aligns with business goals and meets customer needs. Currently there are not very many roles in TMR or the Queensland Government with this title or function, so you may find someone who can do this job called something different in your business area. This role is not a project manager.
• Delivery Manager: Facilitates the efficient delivery of projects by managing resources, timelines, and coordinating activities within the team.
• Technical Architect: Designs the overall structure and framework of a system or application, ensuring scalability, security, and technical integrity. This might be an enterprise or solution architect.
• Subject Matter Expert: Provides expert advice on a particular area of service, policy or business function.
• User Interface and/or Interaction Designer(s): Create intuitive and visually appealing user interfaces, focusing on user experience and interaction design.
• Content Designer: Develops engaging and informative content, such as text, graphics, and multimedia, to enhance user experiences and meet communication goals.
• User Researcher: Conducts research to gather insights into user preferences, behaviours, and pain points, informing the team's decision-making process.
• Developer: Responsible for writing, testing, and maintaining code, bringing the product or service to life based on the technical requirements.
• Web Operations Engineer: Manages the infrastructure and systems required to host and operate web services, ensuring reliability and performance.
• Service Manager: Oversees the overall service delivery, including service design, service level agreements, and continuous improvement processes.

In addition to these, you may require some specialist help. That might be from people in these roles:

• Content Strategist: Develops a comprehensive plan for creating, organising, and distributing content that aligns with the project goals, user needs, and brand voice.
• Accessibility and Inclusion Specialist: Ensures that digital products and services are designed and developed to be accessible to all users, including those with disabilities, and advocates for inclusive design practices.
• Cybersecurity Specialist: Protects the organisation's digital assets and sensitive data by implementing security measures, conducting risk assessments, and responding to potential cyber threats and attacks.
• Performance Analyst: Monitors and analyses the performance of digital products or services, identifying areas for improvement, optimising speed and efficiency, and enhancing overall user experience.
• Cloud Service Manager: Manages cloud-based services and infrastructure, ensuring seamless integration, scalability, and cost-effectiveness while maintaining high levels of availability and reliability.

Make a list of these roles wherever you are preparing the content for your session. This might be in a document, spreadsheet or online collaboration tool like Miro.

Set up a collaboration space

Before you invite everyone to join you should set up a shared collaboration space for the team. If you are working in the same physical location, you might set up and area or wall where you can share ideas and work through problems.

In most cases you will be working virtually, and team members may be spread out geographically. A team or channel in Microsoft Teams or a dedicated SharePoint site will provide a single place to communicate, collaborate and share files. This is where you can host team meetings, chat, document decisions and collaborate.

Invite your workshop participants

This play is about forming the core team, so you won't be inviting them all along just yet. This play runs best with 1-3 key stakeholders who can help you find the right people to fill the right roles. You should make sure you have someone who knows the structure of the organisation and can name the right areas or business units you might need to contact.

If you are not able to put a name to every role in the first session, you should at least know what business area or team you need to contact for a nomination. You may also need to run an extra session or do some individual work if it is not possible to fill all the required roles in the first one.

Remember that the core roles are important to have filled every time, and there may be some additional specialist roles depending on the context of your project.

Review the intended outcomes

Within the small group, review the objectives and purpose of the project that you gathered as part of your preparation. Confirm the scope and timeframes that the team will be working within.

Add detail to the roles

Work through your prepared role list. For each role you will want to determine the following:

• Description: What is the description of the role that this team member is going to do?
• Responsibilities: What responsibilities will each person have in the team? Discuss as a group why these might or might not fit in specific roles. This is also where you will map out who has decision making authority and what an approval process might be.
• Time commitment: What will be the capacity or time commitment required for each role? Which ones are need at each stage of the project? Some roles, such as the Product Manager, will be heavily involved the entire time whereas subject matter experts may be less intensively involved for certain stages. All roles in the team should expect to maintain some level of involvement throughout the project.

Identify gaps

Looking at the roles and responsibilities that you have mapped out, determine if there are any gaps. See if there are any areas that no role covers, this could mean that you need a new one or an existing role needs to be redefined.

Map people to roles

Work through your prepared role list. For each role you will want to determine who will be able to fill that role. You may already have names, or it might be that you only know you will need someone from a particular business area or team.

Team rituals

Throughout the lifecycle of the project, you will want to conduct some team activities to keep the group connected and on track. These are often call team rituals.

Make a list of the team rituals that you want to use throughout the project. This could be stand-ups, weekly team meetings, or retrospectives. Choose how long each of these activities will last, and how frequently you will run them. Once you have confirmed team members for each role you can confirm these details work for the whole group and make any necessary adjustments.

Invite the team

Now that you have defined the structure of the team you need to invite everyone to join. If you don't have a name for each role, you should email the appropriate team or business area and get them to nominate someone. If required, seek approval from the supervisor of your prospective team members for the time commitment you will need from them for your project.

In the invitation make sure to include what role you need them to play, the time and meeting frequency commitment and any specific knowledge you are expecting them to have. For example, you might need someone from IT to have detailed knowledge of a particular system. Include a deadline for when you need them to respond.

Once everyone has accepted their role, invite team members to an initial project team meeting. You can also send out recurring invitations for all your team rituals.

The team charter play is useful for creating a shared understanding of team's goals and objectives, which can improve team cohesion and nurture a sense of ownership and commitment to the team's success.