Three words to define an ideal project team

It is not easy to describe what an ideal project team is in just three words. In fact, a good team must meet a broad number of characteristics, but if had to select exactly three words, I would choose the following ones:

- Adaptability: We live in a world where changes in many ways are part of daily. Unfortunately for project managers, developers and any other members of a team, what was accepted and approved yesterday, today could be slightly different for our customer, and what is worse, completely different for us. For this reason, an ideal project team should be composed for people who are able to adapt to any kind of change, such as the schedule, requirements, resources, as well as know how to work with different methodologies.

- Commitment: From my point of view, this is the most important feature in an ideal project team (if I had to choose just one). A project team must be exactly this, a TEAM. All the members of the team must show a commitment to the team itself and to the team’s goals. If we have a team with this property, the chances of success are really high. Commitment is a characteristic especially important in agile methodologies, because there exists a higher frequency of feedback between the members of the team and also with the customer.

- Responsibility: A project team should also has the capacity of being responsibly of its duties and tasks, as well as over its achievements. In this sense, the responsibility must be assumed by each member of the team, with no exception, because they should feel responsible for their own work, and also for the work of the rest of  the members of the team. Thus, lack of responsibility in only one component of the team may lead a project failure.

I discarded the following three words from the final selection. However, they are actually a very important bunch of features for a project team:

- Motivation: this characteristic is crucial not only in project teams, but also in many other things of daily life. Sometimes, lack of motivation implies employees who are not happy with their work, and this could be a huge problem. The project manager must try to maintain worker's motivation, which often guaranties great results.

- Communication: Among the discarded options, this is my favorite one. Communication is a key feature because every team is composed for PEOPLE, therefore the members of a team NEED to communicate each other to report information, feedback, instructions, opinions, etc. In my opinion, the worst thing that could happen in a project team is lack of communication.

- Leadership: All the boats have a captain, all the soccer teams also have a captain, and project teams are not an exception. The figure of the project manager is essential to lead the team and choose the most appropriate option in any occasion. Teams with non-defined leader may easily fall into internal troubles and disputes between their members (a kind of 'civil work').