I just finished my bachelor's work at the Technology Management and Economics, Chalmers University of Technology. The candidate work was titled Tomorrow's assembly-line mounting in light of yesterday's experiences. The aim has been to describe and compare some of today's prominent systems for automotive manufacturing and then to come to conclusions about the future of farming.
Candidate Work in Industrial Economics at Chalmers conducted in groups of six people and comprises 15 credits. This means 1.5 years full-time work (90 credits) for one person, which in my perception is very extensive.
Because the group consists of six persons to be a problem thus requires extensive coordination, management and collaboration. Karl Wackerberg , part of my bachelor work group, taking in his speech to effectively write a thesis project and reports the number of points that he considers the most important to a group shall agree. In this post I will give my views on the group process to write an essay.
Parable between the group's productivity and resistance in the parallel and serial connected resistors ...
Illustration of the parallel connection
Within elläran are a variety of laws on the relationship between voltage - U stream - I resistance (resistance) - R and power - P. Two well-known laws dealing with resistance in the parallel and series circuits.
Illustration of the series connection
My theory of group work is that the productivity of the group varies from a state where everyone gets out their maximum capacity and a condition in which members of the group inhibit each other.
That all gets its maximum capacity corresponds to the resistance of the series circuit where R_tot = R_1 + R_2 + ... + R_n.
To inhibit the group of people to each other may be illustrated by the resistor in a circuit in parallel connection, which 1/R_tot = 1 / R_1 1/R_2 + + ... + 1/R_n, which means that R_tot <R_1, R_2, ..., R_n.
The theory's upper limit can be justified by the group's performance could theoretically be the sum of all individual achievements of all have exactly the same case, the task can be divided perfectly between individuals and that there is no problem in joining the results. These criteria, however, very often, which means "overhead losses." Overhead impairments manifested in difficulties in communication between team members, delayed deadlines, difficulty to suit the times, a lack of commitment, inability to get along and so on.
How can a group be controlled to achieve the best results?
"Adding more people to a late project only makes it later."
- Is a result of Lehman and Bellamy's five laws on software development and project management (Software Engineering and Project Management). This quote is commonly by the acronym Brooks Act. The reason for the law are communication problems and difficulties for new people to put themselves into a project in a short period of time.
I would like to apply the Brooks Act to candidate work:
"If a project consists of both the people working the front and heavy at the back are often problems when working heavy at the back shows that they want to contribute to the result.
The implication is that if the group has decided to work after certain deadlines, and they are not held by some in the group, they end up behind. So I think it is very important to really establish a common ambition. If not all share the same ambition, it is important that it is also clear so everyone knows what is what.
Like Karl, I think it is a good way to work in pairs, just as it is a common practice in programming projects. Working in pairs provides more than one opinion and a more elaborate text with minor errors.
I also believe that a standardized approach is essential. This is because work on the default allow "best practice" application, the process is quality assured and a third party can pick up where another left without paraphrase. The paper work is standards also important to provide a common thread throughout the text. I do not believe in ownership of the text. A text is owned by everyone in the group and is free to develop, challenge and correct the error.
Other important elements of the group assignments for processing the text:
- Cooperation with the client.
- The reconciliation view and problems formulations continuously for each of the increments in the text so that these increments do not lead to conflict with what was previously written.
- To continuously review the structure of the work when the new increment is made. Could it be that something is duplicated? Strive constantly looking for low bonding between the fabric and high degree of context to pieces. This makes it easy to keep the structure of the text and sort on the second approach. A writer must always expect change in the text.
Parable with agile methods in software development
My advice above was based upon the principles of the Agile programming methodology extreme programming. Extreme Programming is based on the following principles:
- Continuous increments that are reviewed together with the client and evaluated to generate requirements for the next increment.
- Pair Programming provides quality of the code due to double through reads.
- All own code.
- Collaboration with the client to specify requirements for the next increment.
- Continuous testing when a new increment introduced. All tests carried out previously run in conjunction with the tests developed for the new increment.
- Continuous refactoring of code to simplify maintenance and future increments.
- Aim low "coupling" and high "cohesion".
In fact, there is much to learn about writing processes by studying bullet in software development and thinking outside the actual application. However, I believe, despite all the theory that, in the new project is very much about the experience of old. You therefore need to continuously evaluate itself, continuous improvement and never being satisfied.
