Difference Between Team Building And Team Development

Distinguishing team building from team development

1. Introduction

There is a vast difference between “team building” and “team development”. There is often some confusion in the way the terms are used by managers and official and often writers. The ultimate aim of this article is to outline critical differences between team building and team development.

Development should be seen as a process of growth from an initial stage towards execution of possibility or development. The concept of development needs to be considered in the context of project team human resource management. Development can produce obligation and motivation from project team members.

However the main objective of team building is to put a corrective action to a problem

The difference between Team Building and Team Development

2.1 Team building

Team developments are mostly decided by work requirements and business objectives. There are on site work teams that work together on a day-to-day basis and the cross-functional teams who work on specific projects. Then there is the conditional task force called ‘The implementation team’ created to handle a special task.

Implementation teams basically bring in change. They are comprised of individuals who have the skills and knowledge to implement a new method or process within an organisation either across single or multiple locations. In general, implementation teams have to integrate the specifications developed by the functional experts into a process or facility.

Sometimes the team is formed for the purpose of bringing learning and knowledge to a different market either in the same country or internationally. The objective is to take something that worked very well in one place and transfer it to another in the hope of achieving greater efficiency and productivity across the board. It’s the concept of sharing ‘best

The focus is more long term concentrating on setting up systems for the period of the project. Dispersed and continuous is part of day to day processes of project work. Team development targets generating and improving all the project teams systems to ensure that they support higher performance continuously. (Kinlaw, 1991:25)

It can thus be concluded that the distinction between team building and team development was made to indicate that the two concepts are both important in pursuit of an effective team.

4. References:

Argyris, C. 1994. Good communication that blocks learning. (http://www.lbl.gov)

Barnes, 2009. Project Human Resource Management.Study guide. Florida:UNISA

Katzenbach, J.R., & Smith, D.K. 2003. The wisdom of teams. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.

Knowles, R. 2002. The leadership dance. Niagara Falls, NY: Center for Self Organizing Leadership 3rd edition

Meredith, J.R., & Mantel, S.J. 2006. Project Management: a Managerial Approach. Hoboken, NJ: Jon Wiley and Sons.

Phillips, J., 2010. IT Project Management: On Track from Start to Finish. New York: