Group Projects

The Draft – Choosing The Team: Checklist Required

Unlike Major League Baseball (MLB) you will have to assemble players to make up your batting order without the opportunity to trade them.

It is often in the first classes when groups are made up. Perhaps there is no need to draw enemy lines in the sand, but your group mates will form the battalion that will take on the class. Students commit prolific mistakes when it comes time to choosing groupmates, so here is a basic checklist to consider.

Schedule Conflict

On the one hand, business students are taught how to be effective with resources such as time. On the other hand, finding a common time to meet your group is a challenge and can be a waste of time. After all, in business, you all work to find a common meeting time. In school, schedules are rarely in sync and this causes a problem.

Students should make groups according to schedules. Do you prefer to meet on weekends or weekdays? Are you a night person? If so, make sure your group is too.

Topic

In a perfect world, your group should be composed primarily as a function of the topic. This is utopian. Reality is that the topic is secondary to getting the job done and it should come as no surprise that time is the single most important variable in all schoolwork. This said, the topic makes or breaks a project so make sure you all agree on one and are confident in getting the most out of everyone.

Friend Or Foe

Conventional wisdom would dictate that you get together with friends. After all, you know one another and can avoid any surprises. But one goal of group projects is to meet new people who become valuable contacts in your professional career. So maximize the opportunity. Group work is not glamorous, it is grueling, time consuming and tiresome. As a result, finger pointing could arise. Do you wish to lose a friend over something as trivial as this?

Recruit From Different Majors

One factor to consider is that any class project – regardless of the particular class – requires input from all functions. In Finance, you may be asked to develop a new security but a complete analysis would also entail the marketing of the security to the appropriate investor market.

A marketing project may entail the development of a new product to target an emerging market, but without a rigorous break-even analysis, the entire context is irrelevant. Remember the car that Homer Simpson designed at his long-lost brother's request in The Simpsons?

Each student brings a different expertise and will bring their class lessons and textbook know-how to the project. This completes the analysis and gives a more thorough, real life end product.

This also instills responsibility in other members and challenges them with a mandate, making each member a department head or VP.

This may pose a leadership conundrum, but the reality is that being leader is far more than a figurehead position.