Assessment

Communication and Teamwork:

             The members of our team were able to communicate fairly effectively through email and personal contact, and even though there were glitches from time to time, we were able to learn from our mistakes and overcome them.  We were always up-to-date on each other’s progress, and so was our technical advisor.  We worked in a “conveyor-belt” system, where each member of the team was responsible for a certain task.  This way, multiple components of the project could be accomplished simultaneously by utilizing the advantage of having four people to work on it.  Our technology teacher, Ms. Rios, always kept us on top of things, so we knew where we should be in our attempts to complete the project.  We were able to combine our talents to produce the best final product by assigning the team members various jobs that complemented their best abilities.

             The project went very well since the beginning of January, but during the preliminary stages, some of the teamwork and communication formerly described was lacking.  After we had all agreed on the idea, we did a lot of research on our topic.  However, all four of us ended up doing the same thing, and we were not working as efficiently as we could have been.  When we finally had to begin putting our project together, the deficiency in this teamwork disappeared almost immediately, and we knew exactly what we had to do in order to complete the project to the best of our ability.

Lessons Learned:

1. Power of the Individual: Every team member’s cooperation is crucial to the overall success of the team because if one person does not accomplish their task on time, this will inhibit the other team members from accomplishing theirs.  Conversely, if a team member is prompt in completing their job, this will give the others a head start in doing theirs.
2. Time Management: Though it seemed like a lot of time from the day the project was assigned, experience showed that a sufficient amount of work was also involved.  We soon discovered the importance of staying on task, using our time wisely, and always keeping the deadline in mind.  We also learned to take advantage of class time, during which we could communicate more easily and “tie up loose ends.”
3. Organization: Distributing the various jobs and keeping each other updated on our progress proved to be a crucial element to the success of our project.  We found it to be very important that everyone be updated on how the different sections of the project were going, in order to make sure that we were not falling behind.  Evidently, communication was a big component here, without which we would surely have run into disaster.