Team Project Status Report, October 3rd, 2011

Ian Coppock

What did you personally accomplish on your team project this week?

As the project manager, it's my job to keep tabs on everyone and organize assignments. I was able to pull together a Friday meeting with my team, in which we discussed the revisions needed on our client report proposal, and how we would go about making those changes. As I am also the editor, I assembled and line-edited the entire proposal before sending it to Amanda McIntyre for formatting. I accomplished a lot this week; I was able to lead my team (thanks in no small part to their diligence and hard work) and I edited the document that will ultimately guide our efforts in this project. I also managed to divide work fairly evenly among us; Amanda did the formatting, Connor conducted research, Jessica developed a style guide, and Michael talked to people affiliated with our project. Dividing workloads has become something of an issue, but I'll discuss that in later questions.

What are you planning to accomplish this week?

This week we're moving on to the next phase of our project. I plan to participate in interviews, make our survey, and edit all outgoing documents, as is my job. These projects have been intense, but, much as I may dread them during crunch time, these workloads are giving me some valuable writing experience already. I'm learning how to make my writing sound more formal and respectful (i.e. asking someone for help rather than stating it). I plan to accomplish the continued management of my team, which means continuing to balance our roles against and with each others. Perhaps most importantly, I feel that I need to address certain issues within my team, which I've listed below.

What challenges are you facing individually and as a team?

I can't say that I'm facing any challenge I haven't figured out yet. There have been writing and formatting problems (like using the memo format as opposed to business letter, and figuring out these differences) but, between the book's chapters and your teaching, I'm learning as I go and staying on top of things. I appreciate your constant advice; it's one of the biggest reasons I'm not facing any individual issues right now.

Our team functions pretty well, but Amanda recently expressed that she feels she, I, and Connor are doing most of the work, while Michael and Jessica do relatively little. Michael is never short of motivation; I think that his potentially small workload is due to his bouts of sickness and doing a lot of the logistics outside of the writing, like contacting Deb Vickery. Jessica's case is different. While highly motivated, she seems to think that her other classwork supersedes our groupwork. She's repeatedly turned down full assignments because of other things going on, which, while understandable, is not acceptable. I've somewhat tolerated it up to this point and balanced our work as much as possible, but this class needs to be considered as "important" as these other things going on. I'm not sure what Connor's thoughts are on all of this, but I feel like we need to sit down and establish better guidelines.

How can I help?

Any suggestions you have on the above mentioned situation would be greatly appreciated. I'm a good communicator, but talking about something as sensitive as workloads might require some outside assistance as far as tact goes. I won't be here the next time we meet, but if you talk to Amanda about the issues brought up here, I"m sure you two can work something out. Amanda has become something of a co-project leader, in many ways, and I trust her with any advice you give until I'm back next week.

Thanks Jeff. I'm learning a lot in this class.

~Ian