We all dream of projects where objectives are clearly defined, mutually understood, where every team member knows which role to play, which responsibilities to fill, where constructive feedback is daily routine, lessons learned are shared across teams, and, last but not least, where teams deliver results, on time and in budget.

Way too often this stays a dream. The opposite may be the case: The scope is undefined, stakeholders expectations are not aligned, roles and responsibilities only vaguely defined but not agreed, antagonism and distrust widespread, isolated and insular work practices dominate actual team work, and deliverables are late and/or of poor quality.

The big question is how to get out of this mess, how to re-align the project.  In late spring I conducted an online survey on this topic.

In total 29 people participated in this online survey over a time period of about 8 weeks.  This is certainly not a representative number.  Still, the results indicate important insights about team involvement and project re-alignment.

Some of these insights I have incorporated in my presentation “It Takes a Team To Re-Align a Project:  Lessons from Rescue Missions” at the PMI Global Congress in Orlando, Florida (Oct 10-13, 2009) and the corresponding article.

Please go to http://www.tinyurl.com/TJEP-TeamRescue to view the results of the survey.