| Course | BU 502 Leadership and Team Dynamics |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 1 |
| Paper type | Team context and evidence base |
| Length | About 1,240 words, 7 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Herzing University |
| Program | MBA |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for BU 502 Unit 1
Eleven Roles, One Scheduling Board and Eight Weeks of Notes: The Team Context and Evidence Base for a Composite Household Moving Company's Move Coordination Team
Student Name
Business, Herzing University
BU 502: Leadership and Team Dynamics
Instructor Name
April 6, 2026
Eleven Roles, One Scheduling Board and Eight Weeks of Notes: The Team Context and Evidence Base for a Composite Household Moving Company's Move Coordination Team
Purpose of This Briefing
This briefing describes the team I lead well enough that a reader who has never visited it can follow every later claim in this course. The company and the team are a composite built for this sample: a household moving and storage company operating from one warehouse on the Kansas side of the Kansas City metropolitan area, running about 2,300 local and regional moves a year with 14 trucks. Nothing below names a real person, and the figures are illustrative of a business this size rather than drawn from any employer's records.
The team is described first as a structure, because size, purpose, reporting line and the way work passes between roles explain more of its behavior than any account of the people in it (Hackman, 2002). The evidence base follows, sorted by how I came to know each thing, and the briefing closes with my own position, since that position limits what I could see.
The Team as an Entity
The move coordination team turns a customer's request into a move that happens on the promised day with the right crew, trucks and materials. It owns everything between the first call and the morning the crew leaves the yard: the estimate, the booked date, the crew and truck plan, the customer's confirmations and the first response to any damage claim. It does not own the crews themselves, who report to a separate warehouse and crew manager, and it does not own pricing policy, which the general manager sets.
The team has eleven members plus me. In its current form it is six months old: until October 2025 the three estimators reported to sales, and they were moved into this team when the company decided booking and scheduling should sit under one lead.
| Role | Number | Main output | Location and hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Estimator | 3 | In-home and video surveys, written estimates, booked dates | Field four days, office Fridays |
| Move coordinator | 4 | Customer confirmations, inventories, day-before calls | Office, 7:30 to 4:30 weekdays |
| Crew dispatcher (senior and junior) | 2 | Crew and truck plan for each day | Office; senior also on call Saturdays |
| Claims specialist | 1 | First response to damage and delay claims | Office, three days; remote two |
| Weekend coordinator | 1 | Saturday confirmations and same-day problems | Remote, Thursday to Saturday |
How Work Passes Between Roles
The team runs on a sequence of handovers. An estimator surveys the home, prices the job and offers the customer a date. A coordinator takes over once the customer signs, builds the inventory and confirms the date. The senior dispatcher builds the crew and truck plan for each day, usually on Thursday for the following week, and the junior dispatcher adjusts it as jobs change. The weekend coordinator works Saturday moves from home with a phone and the scheduling system. The claims specialist only meets a job after something has gone wrong.
Two shared artifacts hold the team together. The first is the scheduling board, a calendar view in the company's moving software that shows each day's jobs, trucks and crews. The second is the 8:15 huddle, a standing meeting of about fifteen minutes that I run every weekday morning. The Thursday crew planning session, attended by both dispatchers, one coordinator and whichever estimator is in the office, is the only meeting where the next week is settled.
The work is seasonal. From May to August the team handles about twice the volume of the winter months, and the last three days of each month are the heaviest because leases end then. Any pattern that is merely awkward in February becomes expensive in June, which is part of why this course project matters now.
The Evidence Base
Every later unit rests on what is set out here, so the evidence is sorted by the kind of access that produced it. The period is eight weeks, from February 9 to April 3, 2026. During that time I kept a working log on my own laptop, written at the end of each day, recording what I had seen happen and what I had been told, in separate columns. The log describes actions and the order they happened in. It does not record anyone's opinion of anyone else, and it contains no customer details or company figures.
Observed directly
I attended 38 of the 40 morning huddles and all eight Thursday planning sessions. I sit within sight of the coordinators and the dispatch desk, so I saw how often a coordinator walked over to the dispatchers instead of using the board, and I saw changes made on the board in real time. I also watched the board itself, which keeps a visible history of who moved which job.
Reported by others
Estimators spend most of their week in customers' homes, so what happens during a survey reaches me only from the estimators themselves. Saturday operations reach me through the weekend coordinator's Monday summary and the senior dispatcher's comments. Crew leads' views arrive secondhand through the dispatchers. These reports are useful, but they are accounts, and each later claim built on them says so.
Documented
The only documents used are ones I produced: my log and my own notes from the Thursday sessions. Company records such as booking reports, payroll, crew timesheets and claim files belong to the employer and are not used, quoted or summarized here, even where they would make an argument easier.
What I Could Not See
Several parts of the team's life were closed to me. I was never present for a home survey during the period, so I cannot say how estimators discuss dates with customers in the moment. I did not attend the general manager's Monday meeting with the sales lead, where I am told booking targets are discussed. Saturday work was invisible except through reports. Conversations in the dispatchers' private message thread were also invisible, and I did not ask to see them.
These gaps matter for the later units. Any claim about how a date gets promised will lean on the estimators' own account and on what reaches the board afterward. Any claim about weekend conduct will be marked as reported. Kozlowski and Ilgen (2006) note that team processes are often inferred from outcomes because the processes themselves are hard to watch; where this paper has to do that, it will say so rather than present an inference as an observation.
My Own Position
I have been the operations lead for fourteen months. Before that I was a move coordinator on this team for three years, which means four of the current members were my peers and still sit next to me. I run the huddle, set the rules for the scheduling board and approve overtime for office staff. I do not set pay, commissions or prices, I do not manage the crews, and I cannot hire or dismiss anyone without the general manager.
That position governs what I can see and how I am seen. Coordinators talk to me freely, partly from habit. Estimators joined the team after I became lead and tend to treat me as a scheduler rather than a manager. When a member tells me something, they are telling it to the person who allocates their overtime, and I have tried to keep that in mind while reading my own log. Wageman et al. (2005) separate the conditions a team works under from the behavior of the people in it; my position is one of those conditions, and later units treat it that way.
What Comes Next
This briefing fixes the team, the period and the evidence. Unit 2 places the team on a development model using dated episodes from the log, and Unit 3 works back from the symptom the whole team names, that the board is always wrong, to the pattern that produces it.
References
Hackman, J. R. (2002). Leading teams: Setting the stage for great performances. Harvard Business School Press.
Kozlowski, S. W. J., & Ilgen, D. R. (2006). Enhancing the effectiveness of work groups and teams. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 7(3), 77-124. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1529-1006.2006.00030.x
Wageman, R., Hackman, J. R., & Lehman, E. (2005). Team diagnostic survey: Development of an instrument. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 41(4), 373-398. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886305281984
What the BU 502 Unit 1 instructions ask for
The first unit of BU 502 asks MBA students to establish the team their later analysis will rest on. Expect to describe the team's size, purpose, reporting line, age and distribution across sites or shifts, then to set out the evidence base: what you saw yourself, over what period, what reached you only through others, and what you could not see at all. Your own position relative to the team belongs here too, because it governs your access. The instructions do not ask for a diagnosis yet, and most instructors read an early verdict as a sign the foundation was skipped. Members should appear as roles, and employer documents such as org charts or staffing files stay out of the submission.
Inside the BU 502 Unit 1 example
The sample starts by saying the company is a composite and that the team will be described as a structure before any person is mentioned. A roles table gives each position's number, output, location and hours. A section on handovers follows a job from survey to moving day and names the two artifacts holding the team together, the scheduling board and the morning huddle, plus the seasonal rhythm that makes timing matter. The evidence section splits observed, reported and self-documented material under run-in headings and lists the company records deliberately excluded. Gaps in access get their own section, and the paper closes on the writer's position as a former coordinator who now approves the team's overtime.
Where the points sit in the BU 502 Unit 1 rubric
Herzing's rubric for this opening unit spreads points across team description, evidence quality, access limits, the writer's position and professional writing. Full credit on description needs structure: size, purpose, reporting line and how work moves between roles. The evidence criterion is where graduate expectations show, and it rewards a clear split between what was witnessed and what was heard secondhand, with a stated period. Access limits earn points when they are stated plainly rather than buried in a closing apology. Position is scored on whether the writer explains how their seat shapes what they could see. Instructors also look for de-identification that holds up, since a role title unique to one person still identifies them.
BU 502 Unit 1 help before you submit
The usual way to lose marks here is to write a company profile with a paragraph about the team at the end. Character sketches cost points too; calling a colleague difficult is a judgment, while a dated action is evidence. Some writers open with the diagnosis, which spends Unit 3 early and leaves the foundation thin. Others mix observations and hearsay in one list, so nothing later can be weighed. Watch for identifiers: initials, a unique title or a small team can point to a real person. If you want help shaping your own team into this structure, our writers can draft a version from your notes with every member kept as a role.
Get a BU 502 Unit 1 example written to your instructions
Your BU 502 classroom posts a rubric alongside the Unit 1 instructions, and both are what we work from, together with any team description or template the assignment fixes. We write a custom example that describes the team structurally, keeps members as roles, and separates observed evidence from reported. First custom sample free, back in 24 to 48 hours.
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BU 502 Unit 1 questions, answered
Can I write about a team I no longer work with?
Usually yes, and it often produces a cleaner paper, since distance makes the structural description easier to write without defending anybody. Check whether your instructions require a current team. Either way the same de-identification applies: roles rather than names, no detail that would let a reader place the workplace, and no material carried out of that employer.
What if my team is small enough that roles identify people?
Then describe function rather than title, and say in a note that roles have been generalized to protect identity. A three person team can be written as the person handling intake, the person handling escalations and the writer. Instructors read these papers knowing the constraint, and a stated generalization is never penalized the way an identifiable colleague is.
Can I attach the team's real performance numbers as evidence?
No. Output figures, quality scores, attendance records and appraisal ratings are the employer's data, and a graded paper leaves the company the moment it uploads. Describe the kind of measure the team is held to, and give the composite case figures of your own, labeled as constructed. The argument does not weaken; only the provenance changes.
Where can I find a free BU 502 Unit 1 sample paper?
The full BU 502 Unit 1 team context and evidence base is on this page, free, with the roles table, the three kinds of evidence and margin notes. Send your own instructions and a team outline, and a matching draft comes back without charge in roughly two days.
How long should the observation period be for BU 502 Unit 1?
Long enough to see repeated behavior rather than one bad week. The sample uses eight weeks of end-of-day notes, which covers several planning cycles and two month-end peaks at the moving company.