REFLECTION
Lessons Learned + Failure Report
This section outlines a reflection of the project, including lessons learned from all members of the team, as well as reflecting on ways the project could have been improved
LESSONS LEARNED
Overall lessons as a whole
Jushwin Mahal
"Understand what you are being asked for, and think critically on how to meet that requirement and go above it."
FAILURE REPORT
A reflection on the realities of life and how to combat it, or accept it?
Although the project was deemed successful by the group’s expectations, there are many regrets and “I wish I did this!” that occur in the aftermath. These are not necessarily failures, despite the name of this being “Failure Report”. This Failure Report highlights major themes within the group that have lead to difficulties in meeting the goals of the project, as well as hindered the overall experience. This provides a means to explain to future groups about how to best deal with the challenges we had.
One of the challenges the team had is validation - validation of the needs we had from secondary research, or validation of our design. Validation is essential to any project - it is the confirmation and the manifestation of self-esteem in your project to know that it's worth is accounted for. Without validation, the team actually lost a lot of motivation and hope for the project. For example, in the design team, our design validation and testing came at the end of the project. A lot of uncertainty and repeated design iterations were caused by not validating our design throughout the project. The team could have saved a lot of time if our designs went through rapid prototyping and testing to see if they show promise on being validated throughout the project. This means checking requirements consistently and having a plan to optimize and validate at all stages - not just the test phase! Despite this, it is important to note that sometimes validation is hard to achieve. One of the great pivots of our team was to adapt an Open Innovation Model such that the validation that lacked in the beginning now had a system of validation itself. Thus, we found a solution we weren’t even expecting!
One of the biggest challenges as a team was management of time and the team itself. This leads to many issues, such as unequal division of work, tensions not addressed, lack of communication, and worst of all: losing motivation. With a team so diverse and one that is luckily very friendly with each other, it can be difficult to ensure progress is met, especially with school getting in the way. Looking back, I would say one of the ways to get around this is to have someone do check-ins in the team. Reminding people of the project and their duties holds people accountable as well as holds the project accountable to fulfill its mission. A method to streamline this is to have a system of accountability within the team as well.
These two themes were the ones that have come again and again throughout our project, and ones that will continue to occur in almost any project. However, the point of failures is not to point out the bad, but to accept the realities that lie ahead: the reality of a busy schedule in one’s final year, and the reality of Murphy’s law - anything that can go wrong will go wrong. These realities are ones to be cognizant of, and one to develop systems and relationships in order to mitigate these effects. Overall, our team is delighted with the progress we have made, and do look forward to the continuation of this project.
- Theresa Nguyen
REFLECTIONS
Theresa Nguyen
This was a great interdisciplinary project. One of the lessons I have taken away is how to constantly reassure that your project is meeting your customer and your client's needs, and how this must be constantly checked at every stage.
Personally, I thought project management came secondhand to me, but it was challenged further in my role as one of the project managers for this project. However, I found myself shying away from putting my foot down when times got tough, and I now look back with regret, wishing I spoke up more. I realize that, with everyone's goals aligned to the project, it is okay to be the one to remind people of that very goal.
One of the things I learned to value about my team is work ethic. That is what matters most in a team - not how smart you are or what you study, but how much you care about something to work hard to get it done right.
SELF-EVALUATION
Technology
Although our team was able to meet the requirements of the client, we felt that there were many challenges within the team to validate the project.
Our major bottleneck was being too stuck on an idea. In entrepreneurship they do not get attached to an idea (don’t make your idea your baby) because you might have to change or discard it entirely.
We also had trouble balancing expectations between the design process and deliverables, in which report writing should have been done in parallel to the building and design process. Our failure to do that caused us to spend a lot of time on the reports.
Finally, thorough validation throughout the project should have been done in order to optimize the design further.
A list of recommendations is outlined in the Final Project Documentation
Implementation
Our project has incredible potential because we have a strong team with lots of drive and ideas. However, when there is energy but an unclear strategy it can lead to a sense of loss as there is an unclear project trajectory. We believe we were able to achieve the overall goal of creating an accessible solar energy technology that is adaptable to the needs of community members; however we believe we could have achieved this goal earlier -especially in regards to the creation of our implementation framework. On reflection, we limited ourselves by thinking that the only way we could ensure positive impact was through primary ethnographic research. While we still believe this would be the most direct way to ensure that the needs of different communities and community members are addressed, we later realized that this was not the only way to ensure meaningful impact. After realizing this, we were able to pivot our approach and think outside the box about how else we could incorporate local engagement in the implementation process.
In order to understand this sooner, it might have been better if we had established a coherent strategy earlier in the project’s development process. This would allow us to attain a vision beyond the deliverable deadlines and therefore beyond the traditional participatory approach to implementation in the form of primary research. We were able to learn a lot from this project and eventually came to a solution that allowed us to overcome this roadblock while sticking with the goal of creating technology that is accessible and meets the needs of the communities. If we had been able to overcome this challenge sooner however, it would have given us more time to explore next steps, such as creating partnerships with organizations that would help us get our technology into the right hands.