Revision as of 02:42, 30 November 2012

Project Management: Critical Project Review

Cause for Corrective Action

Unresolved Challenges

We are still having some challenges in the group.

1. Group members not attending meetings.

• To address that attendance is mandatory, in the emails, there is a statement saying if a group member does not respond it will be assumed they will be attending the meeting.
• Group members are responsible for responding and letting the other members know they will not be present.
• If this does not occur it will be considered a "no call, no show." In this case, it will be noted and mentioned in the meeting minutes.
• Group members will then deducted points from their group evaluation.

2. Group members are waiting until last minute to start their share of the assignment and are not meeting expectations of the group.

• For past gates group members are only volunteering for parts that interest them.
• When being allowed to participate, they do not meet the standards of the group for this project.
  • For example, they will leave subsections unfinished or leave parts completely undone.
• To solve this problem we decided that one group member would assign parts to the other members, regardless of preference.
• For the next gate the parts will be assigned early enough where each group member putting in an adequate amount of effort should not be a problem. (Assignments for this gate were made late).
• If a group member does not meet the requirements it will be noted and mentioned in the meeting minutes.
  • That group member will then be penalized during group evaluations.

Challenges That Have Been Addressed

Communication

The main communication problems were as follows:

• Primary mode of communication was text messaging.
• Miscommunication of assignment due dates.

These were addressed by adding more modes of communication.

• Emails are sent out weekly containing agendas of the meetings, due dates, new meeting times, etc.
• We have set up a photobucket.com account so all pictures will be available for anyone in the group to access.
• We have set up google docs account so all material being worked on will be available to each group member.
• We have meetings about once a week and the minutes can be found in the table below.

These solutions have been working. Each group member knows to look at the wiki page and their emails as reference to which parts they are responsible for and when they are due. Assignments have been turned in on time for the most part.

Table 1: Weekly Schedule

Monday Meeting Minutes

Oct 22:

• Determined the time and date of dissection.
• Will meet Tuesday, October 23, 9am to 11pm in the lab.
• Lab is located in 621 Furnas.
• If we do not finish within the two hours, we will find another time to meet.
  • Added Tuesday: We will meet Wednesday, October 24, 10am to 12 pm, in the lab to finish dissection.

Oct 29:

• Determined group issues will be discussed at a meeting with the professors
  • Will meet Thursday , November 1, 11:30am in office hours.
  • Office hours are held in 203 Furnas Hall
• Hours each group member spent on Gate 2
  • Tiffany- 30
  • Nick- 5
  • John- 3
  • Liz- 1
  • Garrett- 1

Nov 5:

• Met in the dissection lab
  • Started work on Gate 3
  • Worked from 10:30am to 11:30am
  • Who was there: John, Liz, Tiffany, Nick
  • Who was supposed to be there: everyone
• Will meet Tuesday, November 6. Time and place TBD.

Nov 12:

• 2pm in the basement of Capen Library
• The meeting lasted about 15 minutes.
• Our agenda was to split up the parts for gate 3.
  • Cause for corrective action- Tiffany
  • Component summary- John
  • Product analysis- Nick and Tiffany
  • Solid Modeled Assembly- Started by Nick
  • Engineering Analysis- Liz
  • Design Revisions- Garrett

The parts will be finished and sent to Tiffany via email by 5pm on Wednesday

Nov 19: No meeting was held this week. Have a good holiday!

Nov 26:

• We will meet Tuesday, Nov 27 from 9-11am to reassemble our product.
  • Additional meetings will be added if needed
  • We will meet again Wednesday, Nov 28 at 10am to finish reassembly.

• Each group member was assigned a part to finish for Gate 4.
• Parts are due Thursday Nov 29 at 5pm to Tiffany's email.
  • Cause for Corrective Action- Tiffany
  • Product Reassembly- Two parts
    • John- Explain the assembly process. Include:
    1. the tool used
    2. a description of what you did
    3. how long each step took
    4. how the product was originally assembled
    • Liz- Any challenges we faced during reassembly and describe how they were overcome.
  • Mechanisms- Nick
  • Design Revisions- For this part, each group member will make one change for the product at the system level.
    1. change or elimination must address one or more GSEE factor
    2. change or elimination must improve performance, serviceability, cost, etc.
    3. keep in mind target audience and price point when making changes
• We have to make one of these changes into a presentation that is also due Friday.
• Someone will present to the class next week.
• Please send your parts to me in a format that will be easy to put up on the website and that follows good technical communication guidelines.
  • Edit: Nov 29. Garret will be making the slide show and presenting to the class

Dec 3: (Coming soon)

Wiki Organization

Having one person be the sole webpage programmer has shown to benefit the group. In the first gate, we were marked down highly for or lack of programming knowledge. Effort was given to learn the language and we have increased our productivity as well as our quality of work of the technical communication required for this project.

Product Archaeology: Product Explanation

Product Reassembly

Mechanisms

Design Revisions