Achieving Team Excellence: Is an A Good Enough?

All it takes for a team to malfunction is for each of its members to score an average A in the team member's task. A grade of A is 90% or higher, so if we have a team of two people each scoring 90%, then out of 10 tasks they are working on, up to two could potentially have faults or defects in them. Pretty outstanding is in it! In reality if they are working on the same tasks and each team member had a defect in a task that is different from the one his peer reported a defect, we have an overall score of a B, and not an A.

Now imagine a team of five people working on a project, and each one of them has a set of tasks to accomplish, these tasks are intertwined and interdependent. With each one of the team members experiencing just one defect out of 10 activities means we have a total of 5 or less defects out of 50. If these activities are coupled and some could be common the actual impact is equivalent to more than just 5 defects out of 50, worse case is 5 defects out of 10 if all tasks are common across the team, which equates to an F.

Teams members need to not just achieve grade A quality, but reach above and beyond an A, to allow the team to strive for an A grade satisfaction and excellence.