Teams have significant potential. When an organisation gets its teamworking 'right' significant benefits can accrue. Team experts, consultants and academics advance a plethora of tools, theories, techniques and concepts to inform and facilitate successful design, development and implementation of teams. Yet, despite a significant body of thoughtful research on team-based approaches and a variety of potential benefits that can be realised by effectively deploying teams, the literature is populated with examples of teams that fail to produce desired results. Teams are complex systems. Therefore they are characterised by interdependent processes that incorporate an entire spectrum of activities commencing with the initial identification of need and extending through to the realisation of that need and in some cases dissolution of the team. This research has identified a team systems engineering life cycle, which envelop team system activities from 'conception' to 'grave'. The team systems engineering life cycle (DBOM) was observed to include four main groupings of activities which correspond to: 'design', 'build', 'operate' and 'maintain' (DBOM) life phases through which a typical team system progresses.