An empirical study of the relationship between the internal health of project teams and their performance

The effectiveness of using teams to improve an organization's performance has been well documented in both the public and private sectors. Typically, however, an assessment of how well a team is functioning is based solely upon external quantitative measures such as the number of customers served, the number of defective units produced, and other cost, schedule, and performance numbers. While these traditional measures are important to management's assessment of a team's performance, they do not give a complete picture of the team's overall long-term performance potential. In this paper, the internal "team health" of a team is defined and postulated to have an impact on the team's long-term performance. Research currently underway at the University of Alabama in Huntsville to determine if a positive relationship exists between a team's health and its performance is documented.