TDM Wordpress Theme Development Center

I think it’ll take me an entire month to re-cap the events that took place over this semester. Everything worked perfectly up until the end, where only about 75% of stuff went as planned. Surprisingly, I feel that the project as a whole was a success. Definitely not the best that could have been done, but i’ll attribute that to the group.
We finished the project and it worked as planned. A few things could have been better. Quite a few things could have been better. I think problems (if you can call it that) with the group is what led to the most frustration and ultimately created an atmosphere that wasn’t the most conducive to the last-minute thrust most design projects have.

Dead Weight

It kills you. If you find you have dead weight on a project, get rid of it immediately. For not noticing that and fixing the problem early, I blame myself and I can guarantee it will never happen again.

Initially, I accepted the dead weight as an “ok” thing, because I have been in groups where I was the deadest of the dead as far as pulling my own weight is concernred. Somehow I stuck it out as a form of self punishment and I can now truly see how it kills groups. Its like cancer. The project wasn’t as bad-ass as it could have been because of the dead weight we were forced to carry.
Things I would have fixed:

1. Have a nice, smooth pep talk with my group members earlier in the game to bee where everyone’s head was at. If they were looking to be dead meat, slice ‘em quick and deep.
2. More dry runs of the actual final demo.
3. Put myself on a stricter deadline that would have had us “finishing” two weeks in advance.
4. Have a clearer definition of “finished.”
5. Distribute the workload more effectively and not try to take it all on my back.
6. Do more research before picking teammates.

That’s the lesson learned from this project.

In the mean time, i’ll work on starting my next project so that when I graduate, I have acutal working products to put on the table and if there’s any question of technical skill/knowledge, its immediately quieted. You can’t deny a working product. From the thought to the schematic to the board layout and population, having an actual working product speaks volumes.