I learned a lot in this course. First off, I would like to say that I was very fortunate and my group worked very well together. It was helpful that I had already worked with Carter and Mary before so I already knew how to work with them. Hannah was an absolute gem and was a perfect team member. We all worked very well together and were able to bounce off of each others’ ideas quickly and effectively.
Four things I learned through this class was (1) how to adapt our idea to a focus group’s suggestions, (2) how to work with complicated schedules and stick to a deadline, (3) how to use a team drive on google docs, and (4) how to rely on a team and put faith that they will do well.
The first and most challenging thing I learned was how to adapt our idea to a focus group’s suggestions. I really liked our idea and during the focus group we had a few had a vocal participants who had opinions that were a little frustrating. For example participants didn’t understand things that were already explained in the website. It seemed as though they didn’t take the time to thoroughly go through the website despite the ample time we gave them. It was really frustrating that they were asking questions that were all explained on the website if they had looked. However, this ended up being a good learning moment because it showed us that we had to be more transparent with our rating system. If two people out of eight weren’t willing to search for it but were negatively affected by it, then it is worth us changing our site to make it more user friendly.
The second thing I learned was adapting to my team members busy schedules. As in every case, working in teams are hard when it comes to coordinating schedules. The biggest challenge is that Carter is a swimmer and I was choreographing the musical. This caused for some major conflicts. I would get out of rehearsal around 9:30pm and Carter can’t meet after 10pm due to his early morning practices. While this was not ideal, we began meeting at 8:00am since this time worked with everyone’s schedules. Last year, I would have never even suggested the idea of meeting in the morning but this class taught me to be adaptable and to put the needs of the group above my own. While it was a little rough meeting that early, we actually got a lot of work done. I think it was due to the fact that we all had the mentality of since we’re up for this, we have to work.
The third thing I learned was how to use team drives on Google Drive. This wasn’t a challenge or anything but was really useful. Normally when using google drive, my teams in the past have just made a collaborative google folder. These folders typically get lost in my drive and become hard to find if I can’t remember the name of it. The team drive kept our folder to the top of my drive and made everything easier.
The fourth thing I learned was how to put faith in my team. This is by far the best team I have ever worked with in the business school. Everyone worked really well with each other and I feel as though the quality of our work showed that. In the past, I have found it hard to trust that my group will do the work that they say that will do. This group was amazing and always met our checkpoints. It was really refreshing having this dynamic and it helped me have faith in group projects again.
I learned many other things from this class. These were just the main (and one fun) highlights of the learning process. Thank you for the great semester!