"Team building" (or "'teambuilding'") refers to the process of establishing and developing a greater sense of collaboration and trust between team members. Interactive exercises, team assessments, and group discussions enable groups to cultivate this greater sense of teamwork. Team building has many contexts, for example in sport clubs and work organizations.

Need for team building

Modern society and culture continues to become more fluid and dynamic. Factors contributing to this include the communications revolution, the global market and the ever-increasing specialization and division of labor. The net effect is that individuals are now required to move between working with many different groups of people in their working and also personal lives. Joining a new group and immediately being expected to get along with them is somewhat unnatural - historically humans have evolved to work and live in close-knit, static societies. Hence the sudden need for methods to help people adapt to the new requirements. All kinds of people, from investment bankers to catering staff and session musicians, face the same difficulties. As yet there is no generally agreed solution to the problem - it may not even be possible given the thousands of years of cultural evolution that brought us to our present behavior patterns.

Team building ingredients

Ingredients seen as important to the successful set-up and launch of such team efforts include:

• selection of participants
• establishing visions, goals, missions and/or objectives
• distribution of workload
• timetabling
• balancing skill-sets
• allocation of roles within the team
• metrics
• harmonising personality types
• training on how to work together

The morale of the team, an important variable, may depend on such factors as:

• support
• resources
• communication
• personalities

As team performance reflects on management, managers -- and even coaches -- sometimes feel the need to take part in constructing and fostering teams.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_building#Need_for_team_building

http://www.ideachampions.com/team_building.shtml
Click on Launching Team Projects for an overview of elements that must be understood to create an effective team. Although this article is aimed at business, the ideas can be adapted to student projects.

360 Evaluations
http://www.uscg.mil/hq/cgpc/opm/360_Eval.htm