• Question: Tell me about a time when a project team effort that you were involved in failed

    Asked by Ashley adeyemo to Jamie, Kristen, Sheun, Simon, Will on 21 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Sheun Oshinbolu

      Sheun Oshinbolu answered on 21 Jun 2015:

      I don’t have an example of a time when it failed, but there were times when i felt things could have been done better. A lot of the time things go wrong in group projects due to lack of effective communication. There have been multiple times where I felt my team could have been more accepting of other peoples ideas or that I should have spoken up more in a certain situation.

    • Photo: William Scott-Jackson

      William Scott-Jackson answered on 22 Jun 2015:

      An excellent question! My final year project at University I consider to be a failure; however reasons were beyond our control.

      We designed and started building a robotic arm that could be controlled by a disabled user’s eye. We made some cracking process, we had the designs all ready for manufacture and we handed the University technicians the designs before the Christmas holidays and then everything went wrong! There were so many projects that required technician time such as the University’s Formula Student project, second, third and fourth year and PhD projects all needed time from the technicians. However the Head of Department prioritised the second year and Formula Student projects over all others and our design was never finished.

      However we needed to get some evidence together that our designs were good and the project would have been a success; so we took it all back to our home and fixed it up as best we could with the tools we had and got as much hardware and software ready as possible. On the day of the presentation I showed off the robotics by using a Wii remote nunchuck controller instead of the eye tracker.

    • Photo: Jamie Johnston

      Jamie Johnston answered on 23 Jun 2015:

      The only time I have been on a project that truly failed was due to a financial aspect which was well beyond the teams control, thankfully not in my current job. But as others have said, often when projects go wrong it is largely down to a lack of communication, talking with your team face to face is so important, as is making sure that any data you present is presented clearly and correctly, even something as simple as the type of graph you use to show information can change how a person sees the results.

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