A Case Study Approach For Understanding The Impact Of Team Selection On The Effectiveness Of Multidisciplinary Capstone Teams

An important ingredient for capstone project success is teamwork. Most, if not all, capstone teams will deal with issues such as poor communication, social loafers, a lack of shared objectives, and an inability to resolve conflicts at various points during the course of a capstone project. In addition to regular instructor mentoring and coaching, team selection appears to play an important role in mitigating such behaviors. In the interest of understanding how team selection might impact team effectiveness in a capstone setting, this paper examines a small sample of capstone project teams over multiple semesters using a case study approach based upon a relatively large population of students. Drawing upon insights from working with students at two different universities (one private and one public) observations on the factors that may impact team effectiveness are discussed. Team composition factors considered in context of the case studies include the impacts of academic imbalance, dominant personality, personality composition, misaligned interests and disciplinary divergence (i.e., fault lines)