Team Member Responsibilities
If you are working on a project by yourself then it is easy–you have all the responsibilities of the project. But when you are on a team then you need to decide who does what. Often you will divide the responsibilities by skill. For example:
- Researcher(s): library, field, and internet research.
- Writer(s): create content.
- Editor(s): organization and style of document. Also proofreading.
- Designer(s): laying out the document, collecting images, making tables, graphs, charts, etc.
You also need good communication between team members. Whether you communicate by email, texting, in-person, or a combination of these someone should be responsible for being the contact person. The contact person makes sure everyone receives the needed information and also can act as a liaison between the team and another organization, such as a community partner if you are doing a service-learning project.
One other important person to select is the coordinator. The coordinator maintains the project schedule. They also run meetings setting the agenda and making sure that the agenda is met.
These are just some suggested responsibilities. Your team might have other responsibilities, or if the team is small combine some of these responsibilities.
Finally you will want to agree on how to resolve conflicts before they happen. Should decisions be majority or unanimous? Who referees conflicts? And don’t forget to record what is done in meetings.
More on teams and team communication can be found in chapter 7 “Managing Team Communication” in Fundamentals of Engineering Technical Writing .
