When i first looked at the planning process, i thought to myself 'we don't need to go through all this junk'. But my views quickly changed with our class assignment. We had to put together a contraption from 8 straws and tape. Okay, simple enough. We broke the time frame down to trace our progress. Step 1 Done!!! We understood our resources were limited and capitalized on all our strengths and catered for weakness. Step 2 Complete!! Then came our biggest blunder. My design team quickly came to an agreement on the primary design. It made sense on paper and we were fairly confident in its structural integrity. What we failed to do is come up with alternative designs in the case that the primary one fell though. Step 3 Incomplete!! Since we already made up our minds on the first design, there was no need to choose amongst different alternatives. We did however assign roles for each person of the group. Step 4 incomplete!! Then our worst fears came to reality. The design that made so much sense on paper just didn't when implemented. Since there was no alternative plan we had to improvise. We taped and bent straws like madness. In the end, we designed something that looked like it had been in a tornado. Step 5 Disastrous!! This whole episode mad me rethink the importance of the planning process. Had we Done step 3 correctly and came up with alternative plans, we may have succeeded in our implementation. I guess this is a classic case of "you live and you learn".
3 comments:
Your group is not the only one who failed to complete all the necessary steps. Because of the lack of time, we had to rush and make our decisions as soon as possible. However, in contrast to your team my group spent most of the time brainstorming the ideas for the contraption. Even after we drew our final design on paper, we still changed it once we were allowed to work with the objects. I agree with you that sometimes things that look good on paper are a complete failure after their implementation.
man we really messed that up...i really wanna know if the egg will break when it land though...
We did not completely follow all the steps. But we never got to see if our contraption would have really worked or not.I know our contraption was not very well designed like other groups. But I think it might have worked if I dropped it in the bucket. I know we messed up but as you said next time we will definitely be more adequate at planning.
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