Group 1
Project 2
CS 4970/5973
Intro to Intelligent Robotics

Team Organization Evaluation

In our organization discussions for this project, we had to integrate a fourth member into our team.  We had been happy with the way the team worked on the first project, so we tried to keep things as close as possible to what had worked before.  To this end, we spilt up our software development into two positions, a junior and a senior position, along with the original documents and hardware positions.

We have been, and still are, weary of putting someone ultimately in charge.  Democracy has served us well.  Our group tends to have direction, not flailing about, so we don't plan on changing this aspect.

Our major stumbling block on this project was scheduling and time.  With the demonstrations for this project being due the week after spring break and several members being out of town at that time, the number of ways we could work out our schedule were somewhat constrained.  Our plans involved everyone meeting for final testing and debugging, however, given the time crunch we were under, integration of individual components was still taking place Wednsday night, so benefits of the group meetings (i.e. brainstorming, multiple points of view) weren't achievable until after our first run.

Overall, we think our organization worked well enough to warrant keeping it for future projects.  The problems that came from having the week off should be avoidable.  Although it is likely that we will once again be pressed for time in future projects, the absence of a complete off week will help keep things running smoothly.