The current work provides preliminary insights from a systematic literature review which applied the grounded theory approach to identify factors that underpin teamwork in human-machine teams. This is in response to a call from the literature for theoretical models that target human-machine teams involving human interaction with machine agents. The literature review identified ten factors that underpin human-machine teams. This paper however focuses on bi-directional communication as a central theme because the advanced capability of autonomous technology requires both human and machine agents to inform each other of their taskwork, progress and projected future actions. Failing to transfer this information can see a breakdown in coordination, thus it is important to examine the use of bi-directional communication in human-machine teams. Insights from the literature identified that system (e.g., shared intent), behavioral (e.g., pushing and pulling behaviours) and cognitive factors (e.g., effective comprehension of information) should be considered when designing bi-directional communication systems. These insights contributed to the generation of design considerations that consider limitations in cognitive capacities and context-specific events that dynamically alter the information needs of the human operator. It is hoped that these considerations will support designers in developing systems to display the right information at the right time.