Failures/Successes of projects

Working in teams can present some challenges in completing various tasks but it also has many advantages. As sixth year mechanical engineer student, I have worked with many teams to complete various projects throughout college. After each project, I learned more about how to succeed in working on big projects with people of different personalities and time schedules.

In past projects I’ve noticed that in working with bigger groups it was more difficult in communicating with the whole team on what needs to be completed and who is doing what. I encountered that issue when working on the mechanical design project in which it was very difficult to assign everyone work without really assessing strengths and weaknesses of each individual. Consequently, some team members were burdened with a lot of work, while other team members couldn’t input much work on the project. One of my goals as a team member is to make sure to address my work progress to all my team members and to maintain a very steady line of communication, whether moving along smoothly or having difficulty. Furthermore, I will try to make sure that my team members would feel comfortable asking me for help or assistance on their work and to make sure that the whole team is aware that there is help needed in certain areas.

               Additionally, one of the biggest challenges to overcome initially is deciding what project to do and how to approach the goal. Working in a team presents a lot of ideas and thought processes and it becomes difficult in deciding which approach to take. As a result, there is a lot of time spent in sorting out ideas, especially at the inception of team projects. Last year working on my mechatronics project, my partner and I worked together very well and I would say the main reason was communication. Since it was just two of us working on the project, communication was very easy, as our work was easily split up and relaying information back and forth through texts was convenient and effective. However, once we began the physical build and testing of the project there were many times in which our ideas conflicted with each other and time management became an issue. It is critical to start as soon as possible in order to meet the deadlines and manage time accordingly.