Our group for this assignment consisted of four people, and to help each other in progress of the work, we decided to split the work between all four group members. This was also to ensure fairness that everybody were putting their equal efforts into the work. Work was originally delegated out on the basis of individual’s skills and what tasks they wanted to take on rather than dictate to them, this was done to insure that everybody was happy with the delegation of the workload and therefore hopefully result in the work being delegated in the most productive way.
In this assignment other than the ‘ group progress report’ there are three main tasks that require the use of a different software for each; MS Access, MS Excel and Sage. Given that there is four of us with varying skills, we decided it would not be a good decision to just take one task each as that would result in one person with no work to do; which is not fair on the others, furthermore it is not considering the different skills each team member has and therefore not the most productive way to organise the group.
We agreed that we needed one person to be the group leader to manage the group and make sure we stay focused on the assignment by facilitating planning such as who should be working on each task and when they should have it completed by while taking all views on board. We decided rather than distributing a task to each team member we would be flexible and have more than one person work on each task so that they can work as small teams combining their skills. From our group, while working together to complete this coursework, overall we think we did very well.
This is mainly because of the array of technical ability within the team and our ability to work well together as a team as well the amount of hard work that has been put in by the whole team. Our strengths include the pool of technical ability between us in using the three software’s that the assignment was based on, as well as good cooperation between team members to fairly share out responsibility and work together as well as feedback to the team Our other main strength would be our ability to work well as a team as we are able to communicate well and share out responsibility fairly as well as generally get along as individuals.
I believe I learned a great deal about project organisation and teamwork. In this project we learned how to look at the task and split it into sections and delegate in such a way that all members of the team can be actively working on something most of the time rather than always waiting on each other to finish sections that are pre-requisite to theirs.
Prior to doing this project I have never used sage before, through this project I am confident in saying that I have attained a reasonable level of ability on sage, although initially it seemed very difficult as I didn’t know how do anything and I found the user environment difficult to understand, once I got over this first stage I developed my skills a lot faster.
We would like to look for ways to cut down on bureaucracy involved in making a decision as each team member usually has a lot to say and on each issue and often is hard to get everyone to agree to move on to the next issue, although it is good to consider different views the time factor must be considered, furthermore after completing this assignment we all have trust in the group leaders decisions on most issues so it would be more time efficient that he only brings up issues up for discussion that could greatly benefit from it, this should also lead to the decrease in the number of team meetings which would save time.
Each individual managed to deliver the results that were expected of them, the role definition of each team member is defined in the ‘ Role definition of the group’ section above, these roles were maintained through out although on some occasions some team members crossed over onto other tasks to help with specific problems arose that they were needed for on top of their existing responsibilities. Nozmul Hussain and Abdul Quayum: Section 1- group progress report
The proof that this deliverable was achieved is this report itself as this was the task; I hope it is up to the standard expected of us. For this task to be done I had to have a number of meetings to discuss progress with each member of the team so I could accurately report on progress. In order to report on how well the team did on working towards deadlines I kept in contact with the team leader Muhamed who let me know as each member got their work done in time for deadlines.
I had in total two meetings with the entire team to discuss certain issues for the report such as what they thought were positive and negative experiences in the group, what we would do differently if we had to redo the assignment, difficulties encountered and how they were addressed, team strengths and weaknesses.. I discussed other issues with just the team leader as they were issues I could only take his view on as the overall team leader such as meeting deadlines and deliverables by each member of the group.
Khuram and Nozmul Hussain: Section 2- Working on sage section Having taken part on this task I believe we delivered what was required of us, through this project I have learned to use sage to reasonable level, as for the quality and correctness of what we have produced that is for you to decide. Abdul Quayum, Khuram and Muhamed Farid Ameen: Section 2- Working on MS Excel.
Having discussed with both of them and Muhamed the team leader we have all agreed that through this project that Abdul and Khuram have developed their Excel skills to a high standard that has enabled them to produce a high quality solution to tasks set in the Excel section, they are both very confident that they have done well, again how well they have done is for you to decide.
As far we are concerned it was of a high standard that fulfilled the task and was done within deadlines while maintaining a high level of communication with the team leader. Muhamed Farid Ameen: Group Leader For this section I discussed with all the other team members about what they thought about Muhamed performance as a team leader. They were all positive in their remarks and unanimously agreed they would want him as team leader in future projects.
The main points they made were; that he was very organised, managed team members and working groups well, kept all of us informed, portrayed a good example to the rest of the team through his consistency and reliability as well as his technical ability. Muhamed Farid Ameen and Khuram; Section 2- Working on MS Access and MS Excel These two team members have the most technical ability in the group so it was expected that they would finish their task earlier than the rest well before the deadline in place and yet still at a high standard which they did.
