Blog Topic #2: Planning

I felt our group did an “OK” job with the project, but there is much needed improvement in some areas. One of the greatest attributes of the group was the understanding of the goal and the task at hand. Our goal for the project was to develop an enclosure that would prevent the egg from cracking upon impact. We also understood the time constraints that we were faced with.

Our objective was to develop this structure with a limited amount of supplies. We had only 8 straws and 2 feet of tape, and of course the egg. Now came the strategy portion of the project. I personally feel this is what led to our group’s downfall and failure to meet our goal. During the 25 minutes of planning, there were so many ideas on how to develop this structure. Of course, we we’re trying to bounce ideas off each other, but I feel we spent too much time coming up with alternative ideas. There was no one idea that we could perfect.

At the end of the 25 minutes, we had agreed upon an idea we felt would be most sufficient. We hadn’t even gotten to the most difficult part of the project and I knew it wasn’t looking good from here. We had received the supplies from the professor and with only 10 minutes left to create the enclosure, it seemed as if our group completely ignored the previous ideas that we had come up with in the planning stage of the project. Now, don’t get me wrong, I was even feeling the pressure and I was only in charge of holding onto the egg. But, that’s beside the point; time management was a major issue within the group. I think the countdown on the projector led our group to panic and come up with an idea on the spot that we thought would work.

The egg did wind up cracking in the end. But, the effort was there! With the lack of planning and allotted time that we were given as a group I think we did the best we could. It was fun to see what the other groups had developed. I really liked the idea the one group had of attaching the tape to the egg to weaken the drop. If we had more time, our group had thought of filling the straws with water to lessen the impact. I would have liked to see if we would have been more successful that way.

Overall, this project was a great experience. Planning is by far one of the most important components to project management. Without a good plan, your project is sure to fail. One of the most important lessons I learned from this exercise was time management. Our group would have been much better off if we had a better understanding of how long the enclosure would take to complete. This would have prevented any panic from occurring and more of a focus on perfecting the egg structure, ultimately leading our group to a more successful outcome.