Experience in a Group Project - Essay Example

?Reflection: This paper is my reflection upon my experience in a group project that I was given as a task by the In this project, I together with my team mates was supposed to find a company which had problems. We found a college called Newman College that owned a church. The problem was that the church was used by others and not the community itself. Our business plan was to make the church more useful for the community of Preston. The Cardinal Newman College owns St Augustine Centre that is essentially is a leisure centre. Located in the heart of Avenham, the St Augustine Center has a lot of facilities to provide the community with that include but are not limited to sports, library and recreation. Newman College is one of the best colleges in the area and is for students aged between 16 and 18 years. St. Augustine’s Regeneration Trust (START) was the original owner of this building. The centre opened in 2005 with the aid of Diocese that loaned ?500,000 to START along with forwarding a Letter of Comfort to the bank worth 1.1 million. Unfortunately, money was used wrongly and the loan had to be raised to ?700,000. After some years, Diocesan Trustees resolved to give this building in the control of Cardinal Newman College and proposed that the local community secured the facilities. The Diocesan loan has been returned. Our goal was to enhance the use of this center by the local community. For that, we had to generate awareness among the community, increase center and gym memberships among the local community, improve the quality of fitness programs, and develop retention methods. In order to accomplish the task, five students were assigned to our group, me included. For the rest of the paper, I shall refer to them as A (me), B, C, D, and E. After our group had formed, the first challenge that we had to face was the selection of company with a problem that fell in the scope of our domain and was also worth spending the time finding solution for. Different members came up with different proposals, but either the problem was too aggravated to be solved in the time we had or else, the company was not willing to let us intrude into their business. After much search and days of uninterrupted struggle, we were able to find Newman College with the problem of church utility. Soon after we had found it, we conducted a thorough literature review of the college to see the origin of the problem, what events had happened since its formation till now, and the challenges that the college administration was facing with respect to the church. We approached the college administration for this, introduced ourselves and proposed to find a solution for their problem. They happily agreed to provide all assistance that we might need in our way of finding the solution for this long cultivated problem. The five of us took care of the different areas. I was chosen as the leader, so my task was to administer the project, enhance the coordination and cooperation among team members, keep the project on the track, and keep track of time and cost because we had time and cost constraints and could not spend beyond the amount specified by our college. I would provide all team members with the required equipment and facilities and would ensure their maximum utility. B took the charge of generating awareness. C was responsible to improve the center and gym memberships. D was to devise and improve the quality of fitness programs and E was supposed to develop the retention methods. Marketing, finances and human resources happen to be the key elements for success in any project, so our first meeting with Cardinal Newman was about these elements. From our side, B met with Katie O’Reilly, the Director of Corporate Resources. This meeting was very useful and generated important information for us regarding the project. After the first meeting, B was assigned the task of conducting all correspondence and meetings with Katie. The meetings were not scheduled strictly. They were irregular in general but were conducted quite often. The meetings proved a good source of information for us and Katie was helpful, though sometimes they turned out to be mere wastage of time. This would happen when the agenda was not well defined or the meeting was not appropriately scheduled. Schedule for meetings has to be carefully designed so as to enhance their efficiency and reduce the inconvenience to all parties that participate in them. However, we made sure that B was fully updated on the progress of the project and any issues that we faced at a certain point in time, so that she would be able to retrieve the required information from Katie. B was articulate in her job and new how to handle things in disorganized and tough circumstances. Most of the times, after the meetings, B exactly produced what we expected from her. Smooth and frequent communication is vital for the success of a project. This was quite difficult to achieve given the scope of work was too large for the time we had and with only five members in the team, every member had to take more load than he/she would easily manage. Most of the times, we remained so immersed in our respective works that we could hardly make it to the dining table together. However, right from the first day, we had decided that no matter what the circumstances, we would get together for half an hour in the evening and update one another on the achievements made throughout the day. In addition to that, we frequently made use of technology to enhance the flow of communication. If one member needed another’s consultancy or assistance since the tasks were linked to one another, he/she would use skype to make a video call. This not only improved the awareness in the group, but also turned out to be a fairly cost effective means of communication since all that had to be paid at the end of the month was the internet bill, not to mention that all of us made sure we had high speed internet available. We generally worked in a very calm environment. All team members shared good rapport with one another except for C and E. C and E had totally different personalities, and would never think commonly. The disparity of their opinions was enough to expose the whole group to threat of failure. C and E used to have arguments with each other in the class. In fact, our professor had purposefully included both of them in one group so as to see if working together for some days would have any positive impact on their relationship. Things were going bad for the first week in which C and E frequently quarreled with each other. I took B and D with me and discussed the matter with them. We were sure that if we let that happen anymore, our project would suffer because of their non-compliance. I asked B and D their opinions. We had got together to sort out the matter and improve the relation between C and E. With mutual consensus, we reached the conclusion that I, being the leader would mediate between the two and settle their differences. I conducted a meeting with C and E and allowed them completed freedom to express their concerns against each other in full. Having listened to them, I realized that C was being unnecessarily messy with E, though E was compromising. I told the two that they would regularly update each other on their statuses, but would not conduct any direct communication related to business. They would exchange their words through me. In the capacity of a leader, I would decide whose proposal was to be adopted in different matters. Meanwhile we made C gift E upon his birthday that came in between. This was the start of their good relationship. This turned out to be a useful exercise and within two weeks, C and E were very much on the right track. It was a great learning experience for all of us. We learnt that patience, struggle and consistency are the primary prerequisites of success in a group project. With mutual collaboration, we were able to finish the project well in time. If I were given a chance to fix my mistakes, the first thing I would do is organize and schedule the meetings, as a lot of the precious time of B went into arranging them and three out of four turned out to be unproductive. This not only bothered B as well as us, but also was displeasing for Katie. In addition to that, I would like to manage my time in a way that I could pay sufficient attention to each of the four team members. Sometimes, I could not attend to a team member when he/she needed me. It probably so happened because of inadequate time management on my part. Overall, we all have learned a lot of lessons from the entire process of module. Read More