The more sense of where the company is and where it wants to go that can be instilled early on, the more the value of the teamwork can be leveraged.
In terms of addressing the weaknesses, perhaps it would be beneficial to allow students to stray from the structure, just to get a feel for two things. One, what the students are capable of accomplishing on their own. The other is the value of the structure itself. I feel that it is very important to encourage creative, critical thinking and sometimes overreliance on following structure discourages this. That creativity and critical thinking may also result in more in-depth exploration of certain aspects of the case as well.
The team did not function well initially. There were some problems with regards to communications and role assignments. Some members seemed unclear on what...
The team came together eventually, when after some discussion we were able to paint a more clear picture with regards to the assignment, the company and what sort of outcomes we were attempting to create.
I think what we would have done differently would be to place more emphasis on achieving that clear picture earlier in the process. We ran into problems by jumping right into the task without having a clear sense of what needed to be done. We did not know what the right move was for the company and we did not know what the right move was for us as a team either. I feel we would have had a more effective project, and a stronger group experience had we taken the time to organize the project better in the beginning.
