Playing Well with Others - Leading and Teaching Multi-Disciplinary Engineering Design Teams

Multi-disciplinary teams are comprised of engineers stemming from many different backgrounds and cultures. Bringing a team together from many different backgrounds creates a cultural divide that may lead to strife among team members. Working for a multi-disciplinary team is a fundamental change in the way the members interact. This requires the presence of a change leader and a team atmosphere that is out of their normal cultural bounds. Integrating the disciplines into a System led Decision Process is fundamental to the overall functionality of the team and can be accomplished best by the role of the Program/Project Manager (PM). It is necessary for the PM to set the correct team atmosphere and organization that will last for the duration of the project life cycle. The team’s success relies on their ability to communicate freely, avoiding the “silo effect.” Organizing into heavyweight functional teams will allow for lower level members to incorporate core values and feedback into the team from the bottom up. The team will be able to maximize their output and longevity through utilizing this type of culture.