More than ninety per cent of projects are run by project teams and the stronger the team the more likely the project will succeed. Team building activities are performed to both increase team performance and to enhance the likelihood of project success. For the purpose of this study, information technology (IT) business projects were chosen as IT is a major driving force in business today and there is widespread dissatisfaction with the performance of IT business projects. In analysing the causes of dissatisfaction, increasingly researchers are recognising that technology is a secondary issue behind the human side of project team management. Business projects were chosen because increasingly IT is being used in the business environment to solve problems in the post-industrial era characterised by the service industry, while the manufacturing industry, from which much of the project literature has emerged, reduces. The importance of the project team in developing IT business projects is well recognised and managers are concerned about their ability to transform an ad-hoc collection of people assigned to a particular project into a coherent, integrated project team. In most cases the activities recommended to build a successful IT business project team have been theoretically based, rather than empirically founded. The goal of this research was to investigate the team building activities used on successful projects. To achieve this goal, the research defines the key measures of project success and establishes their relative importance; determines the most important team building activities for project success with experienced project managers; enhances the understanding of implementation of team building activities on successful projects; and provides suggestions on how to increase the likelihood of project success through focusing on team building activities. The research used the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to develop a hierarchical model linking project success measures with team building activities. Confirmation of the AHP results and additional understanding of team building activities implementation was achieved by interviewing experienced project managers. The research found that customer satisfaction, although seldom used, was significantly more important as a project success measure than the three measures most often used - time, budget and scope. As identified by project managers, the most important team building activities for achieving customer satisfaction are team leadership; ensuring senior management support; staffing the team properly; planning the project with the team and empowering team members; building commitment among team members; developing strong communication channels and developing appropriate organisational interfaces. The research found successful projects focused on relationships in addition to the task focus of many project methodologies. The research findings on team building activities will enable project leaders on IT business projects to develop empowered project teams with stronger affiliations and support throughout the organisation. By empowering project teams to create effective internal and external relationships there will be fewer project failures, increased customer satisfaction and improved achievement of project success.

Dans de grands projets tels qu’accélérateurs ou détecteurs de particules, les interfaces et les frontières se révèlent à la fois critiques et sous-estimées. Le manageur technique, acteur parmi les autres, se trouve placé à des nœuds de réseau où il doit mettre en œuvre des espaces d'échanges afin de susciter des conduites collaboratives. À partir d’études de cas issus du terrain du CERN, la thèse adopte trois principes issus de la littérature de la complexité, les principes dialogique,hologrammique et d’auto-éco-organisation. Elle propose une construction méthodologique matricielleoriginale menant à l'élaboration d'un modèle transactionnel de l’acteur d’interface.L’espace d’échanges collaboratif devient le lieu où se déploie la dynamique de transformation del’acteur d’interface en acteur-frontière. Les objets intermédiaires élaborés lors du processus deconception / intégration y sont simultanément transformés en objets frontières, qui sont mobiliséspour la réalisation du produit dans le cadre récursivement déterminé du projet. L’intérêt d’uneapproche globale et couplée de cette dynamique des espaces d'échanges conduit à proposer un«hypercompas» afin d'orienter «l’agir ↔ penser» du manageur technique. / An approach through the complexity of the collaborative process of design, integration and realization:a transactional model of the interface actor and dynamics of exchange spacesAbstractIn large projects such as particle accelerators or detectors, interfaces and boundaries revealthemselves to be both critical and underestimated. The technical manager, an actor among others,finds himself placed at network nodes where he must set up exchanges spaces in order to generatecollaborative behaviours. Starting with case studies from the field of CERN, the thesis follows threeprinciples based on the dialogical, the hologramic and the self-eco-organization principles, asexpanded in the writings on complexity. It puts forward an original methodological matrix constructionleading to a transactional model of the interface actor.The collaborative exchanges spaces builds itself as a place for the dynamic transformation of theinterface actor into a boundary actor. Intermediate objects, created during the design / integrationprocess, are simultaneously transformed into boundary objects. They are instrumental in therealization of the product: this takes place in the framework of the project which has been determinedthrough a recursive process. The interest generated by such a global and combined approach of thisdynamic process leads to the proposal of a “hypercompass”, with the aim of providing the means forthe technical manager to orient his “acting ↔thinking”.