Blog Topic #2 Eggz

During the last management class, everyone was split into groups to complete a group project.  The egg planning project basically required our groups to work together within the allotted to make sure we provide enough protection for an egg not to break from a long drop.  The drop would be around 8-10 feet and it was quite a challenge to protect it.

The project itself was split into two sections, the planning process and the building process.  The planning process involved just the planning parts. we were told that we would have about 2 feet of masking tape and 9 straws.  With these materials we needed to build some form of protection for the egg.  We were given 20 minutes of planning.

The second process was the building process, after 20 minutes of planning, we were given our materials and had 10 minutes to build what we had planned. It is unfortunate that our egg did not survive the drop, but we still put a lot of hard work into our project.

 When comparing the 5 steps in the planning process, our team completed most of them.

Step 1: Define your goals and objectives:
Our group understood the goals we needed to achieve.  We understood the objective as well and we spent a lot of the 20 minutes trying to figure out how to achieve them.

Step 2: Evaluate your resources compared to objectives:
Again, just like in step 1, we spent most of the 20 minutes figuring out how to make sure that egg was well protected.

Step 3: Develop premises and several alternative strategies:
If anything, our group's strength (or weakness) was in this step.  We could not agree with any one plan to focus on during the planning process.  Instead, we spent much of that time disagreeing about each others design.  We drew up nearly 5 different types of ways to use the straws and masking tape, and spent most of the planning process arguing about which plan we would use.  So you can say we had multiple alternate strategies.

Step 4:  Analyze alternatives and make a tactical plan:
 As i said before, we had plenty of alternate plans for our eggs.  The issue was definitely in our tactical plan.  We did agree on one design when we got our materials, however, when we got our straws and our tape.  We really had no idea how to implement these materials into the design,  this was probably because we spent so much time figuring out a design, that we never broke down how to create it. This caused disarray as we all tried to figure out how to make the straws and tape into our design, and then we also realized that the design might not protect the egg the way we want it.

Step 5: Implement the plan and evaluate results:
We did not implement the plan, not at all.  In the ten minutes of building time we had, we were unsure of how the straws and tape would eventually turn into our design.  Therefore, we needed to adapt quickly, we made large changes, but they were good changes that were helpful.  In the ten minutes, we were able to make some form of bottom layer to the egg.  It is unfortunate that our tape did not hold for the second layer we were trying to attach, and when we went to the front. We only had one defensive layer instead of two.

Overall, i would not say our planning process was a waste.  Even though we were not completely prepared when we got our materials, we knew largely of the things we were not going to do with the egg.  Though we might have wanted to keep it simpler in the planning process, and give more time in dividing jobs and figuring out how to make the design fit together, we did not have the time because no one was sure of which design to choose.  However, i would say we did a fantastic job of adapting to the situation even if we were disagreeing for the most part.

What did i learn from this project? most likely that a group of 5 sometimes need to compromise with the design and not let little flaws create disarray.  With 20 minutes of planning, no egg preparation will be 100% guaranteed.  Therefore, sometimes we must have some faith that someone's idea is the most ideal plan and move forward with it, otherwise we'll be stuck figuring out which design to go with for the whole time.