ECE 3400 Intelligent Physical Systems course web page and assignments
This project is maintained by CEI-lab
By Kirstin Petersen, August 10th 2017
Adapted from material courtesy of the Center for Teaching Excellence, Cornell
The team leader is responsile for keeping the team motivated, performing, and balanced. Here as some hints at how you can effectively manage your team.
Think ahead: Every week is going to present new engineering challenges, your job is to keep an eye on the goal and ensure progress. You can do this by making flow charts/Gant charts on what needs to happen next.
KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid. Engineers can tweak their system forever, just to make it a little better. Judge when a subsystem is good enough, and prompt the team members to move on to more important things.
Manage: It is a good idea to make individuals accountable for specific tasks. The more detailed the description the better an estimate of time and work load. The goals/tasks you specify should be measurable, attainable, motivating, and consistent with the group contract. Keep a list of all tasks performed by everyone, this way you can see if anyone is pulling more or less than their fair share.
Be specific: Be very specific about deadlines, keep a written record of what you agree on. If the team website will be judged Friday morning, when should everyone hand in their partial submission? Who will be responsible for pulling it all together and checking the quality of the work?
Critique: Make sure that everyone lives up to the team contract. Such conversations can be unpleasant, but if you refer to the contract they themselves agreed on, that can help.
Praise: If someone does a particularly good job, be sure to give them the praise they deserve, preferably in a team-wide email/meeting.