Project14 | Which Past Themes Would You Like to Work On as a Team?

I am interested in this type of project, but there are significant issues to address such as:

How to form  a team.

• How big should the team be?
• How to find synergy.

How does a team decide what project to do?

• One way to handle this is for individual members to publish proposals and see who else is interested in contributing and then form a team.
• Another way is for a pre-formed team to brainstorm a bunch of ideas then vote on which is preferred.

How to decide who does what.

• Tasks need to be defined and assigned.
• Interfaces between each contribution need to be defined.

How to ensure the project gets done.

• weekly meetings with action items and deliverables
• a schedule with milestone dates

How to transfer hardware between team members

• Does each member duplicate the build?
• Does it all get put together in one place?
• Does it get shipped from member to member?

How to deal with expenses

• How to decide on a budget? Everyone has a different tolerance.
• Who pays?

I am interested in this type of project, but there are significant issues to address such as:

How to form  a team.

• How big should the team be?
• How to find synergy.

How does a team decide what project to do?

• One way to handle this is for individual members to publish proposals and see who else is interested in contributing and then form a team.
• Another way is for a pre-formed team to brainstorm a bunch of ideas then vote on which is preferred.

How to decide who does what.

• Tasks need to be defined and assigned.
• Interfaces between each contribution need to be defined.

How to ensure the project gets done.

• weekly meetings with action items and deliverables
• a schedule with milestone dates

How to transfer hardware between team members

• Does each member duplicate the build?
• Does it all get put together in one place?
• Does it get shipped from member to member?

How to deal with expenses

• How to decide on a budget? Everyone has a different tolerance.
• Who pays?

Doug,

These are good questions.  I know that you have some experience in working on some contests in a small group (a group of two), can you share any of your experiences as they relate to these points?

Thanks,

Gene

I'll give my opinion on how I think some of your questions could be solved:

How to form  a team.

• How big should the team be?

     I suppose that all teams should have the same amount of members, and 2 is probably the best size number unless we later find there are too many E14 members interested in the team contest.

• How to find synergy.

     We could use the forum to publish what we are good at and what kind of other members we would like to work with, or maybe just message directly other members. Many members are quite active in the community and its easy to check from past projects what their strenghts and weakenesses are

How does a team decide what project to do?

• One way to handle this is for individual members to publish proposals and see who else is interested in contributing and then form a team.

     Yeah that's one solution, a different one could be to communicate directly with prospective team members and see if there is any project both members (assuming the teams are of 2)  would be intersted in working on.

• Another way is for a pre-formed team to brainstorm a bunch of ideas then vote on which is preferred.

   Thats another alternative but I it would require teams bigger than 2, and I think it could make many things more complex, I think that for a attempt of this kind of competition teams should be of 2, as it would make the team more agile and flexible.

How to decide who does what.

• Tasks need to be defined and assigned.

     I would leave that to the team itself, members should discuss how they will contribute to the project development.

• Interfaces between each contribution need to be defined.

     I don't understand what you mean with interfaces here

How to ensure the project gets done.

• weekly meetings with action items and deliverables
• a schedule with milestone dates

    Each team could decide this...

How to transfer hardware between team members

• Does each member duplicate the build? 

• Does it all get put together in one place?
• Does it get shipped from member to member?

     As you have suggested there are many alternatives, I would leave this up to each team too.

How to deal with expenses

• How to decide on a budget? Everyone has a different tolerance.
• Who pays?

     Each member would pay just like each member pays on the development of a project14. This point and many others should be discussed with the prospective team member so that things go smooth...

This a very comprehensive list of good questions Doug. I've been thinking about them for a while came up with just two ideas so far:

• Members that are geographically close could be one criteria for a team to form, which will help with costs, logistics, scheduling, duplication of work and so on.
• Members with different talents/strengths/skills could form together a team that complements. E.g. a person with an electronics background could complement his/her work with someone with experience/access to 3d design/printing.

Luis

Hi genebren here are some notes on my past attempts:

Forming a team.

• I wanted to start small to see how it would work so both times it was just 2 team members
• Both times I knew the teammate, so synergy was already solved
• Both times the teammates were local, so we could get together and discuss the project or hand off material. However hand-off didn't happen very often - just a few times

How does a team decide what project to do?

• Both times I chose the project and architected the design
• One time my teammate was interested in collaborating on a project, but didn't have alternate ideas of what it would be.
• The other time my teammate's interest was more about the money than the specific project (sponsors had agreed to pay for the project although  that did not pan out)

How to decide who does what.

• Both times we had a general division - I would do the hardware and my partner would do the software. However in both cases we both ended up doing some of the work in the other's area.

How to ensure the project gets done.

• This was a problematic area - I was blogging about progress each week, so updates were regular, but the work didn't dovetail very well and there were lots of delays in getting material transferred.

How to transfer hardware between team members

• In one case we had partial duplication (the main computer bits) and the rest of the machine had to be transported back and forth for each of us to work on our parts
• In the other case I completed the hardware and handed it off to be programmed.

How to deal with expenses

• In both cases I bought enough material to do the complete job, My partner bought some material to allow work to proceed in parallel. We each kept the material we bought.

Dividing the spoils

• In one case we weren't sponsored and didn't win, but we each received finisher prizes. We had an agreement that my partner would get the prize if we won first or third, I would get the prize if we finished second.
• In the other case we were supposed to be paid on completion, but there was a personnel change at element14 and the project died during the final software development phase.

The interview is here:

https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-89484#comment-130152