It’s the end of week 3 and not much has moved forwards regarding the collaboration project. The students from America haven’t been active, due to this we (Limerick team) had to make some decisions without their input. I wonder if this action has actually caused them to not participate so actively?

We received an odd message from someone in the French team. The French team are supposed to translate our instructional document once finished. One member of the team contacted the group to say that he is not natively from France and his French is bad, therefore isn’t a candidate to translate the document. This has made me question what his role in the project is?

I also received a message from one of the Limerick team asking for a project update. This has lead me to start creating the instructional document; I went in and took a couple of screenshots with comments. Although my role in the team is proofreader (as I have the most experience in this area) I am not sure what has happened to the technical writers who are meant to be constructing the document. Maybe the roles in the team weren’t clarified enough? Where is our team leader?

To be honest I am feeling a bit negative about the project, but this is due to previous experience. As I mentioned previously in another blog post, I was part of a collaboration project during my undergraduate degree,  a project where no one else collaborated but me (also two students dropped out halfway through). I was hoping that this project might be different and that everyone would have a role and know what to do. I guess it just shows that having a strong leader is what makes these projects work.

At work I am usually in control of the project, but that’s because I am the manager of my department. The term “too many cooks spoil the broth” comes to mind, even though half our group aren’t active, I do wonder why so many students are in the team, it’s only a small project and 3 people could easily get the work done. For this project I didn’t want to be too assertive so I’ve stepped back a bit. Maybe this was the wrong decision? Forming, storming, norming and performing are the stages of team development….I don’t really like the storming part, so if there is someone else who wants to take control then I am all for it. However, if someone does want to lead, then they must make decisions.

I guess I am frustrated because I wanted to be part of the team, but not lead the project. I guess there is still time though, the situation can still change.