week 4 response

This reading brings up the idea of a mission statement.  I'm not sure how necessary it is to come up with a formal statement as opposed to determining major goals and priorities.  Some mission statements I've read use flowery language, but I'm not sure how they translate into everyday decision making.  However, group goals do need to be discussed along with logistics about time commitments, availability, and group meetings.  I think how a group makes decisions is extremely important and needs to be discussed early.  Discussing all these things early will help prevent resentment from people feeling like someone assumes to much of a voice for the team or someone feels left out when they can't go to group meetings when the group needs to get together more often to get work done.

The section on the differences between a team and a working group was something I never thought about.  I'm think the differences are more fluid then they appear and the dynamics may change over time as needs change.  In my gateway group last semester, in the beginning the project advisor took on a leadership role to assign responsibilities and people worked on specific aspects individually.  However, by the end, most work was done collectively with discussions about what needed to get done and no one person making final decisions.



Design teams face the unique challenge of no hard answers and therefore needing more group  feedback on different ideas and directions for the project to take.  For example, a research project can have many possible topics, but once a topic is decided upon all is needed is compiling research into a cohesive group.  It is unlikely for partway through a member will discover something that sends the team in an entirely new direction.  In design, there are infinite possibilities at every stage of the process, so open, constant communication is more important.  In design there are very few hard facts that make one approach better than another.  So decisions are much more subjective and potential causes of arguments and conflict.  This means that how a team makes decisions and comes to a consensus is even more important than for other types of groups.