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Engineering Strategies and Practice APS111 - 2023 Assignment: Teamwork Analysis (TA) Teamwork Analysis Getting Started This is an assignment that asks you to review your actions within your team, make logical arguments, and assess the efficacy of past decisions. This takes time. Do not leave this assignment to the last minute! Due : Value : Type : Week 12: Monday, November 20th, 11:59 AM 7.5% Individual Assignment Constraints • Must be 600 words or less. This includes headings and figure captions. It does not include text inside evidence excerpts. o Word count penalties: if >150 words over: -10%; if >225 words over: -15%; if >300 words over: -20%; if >450 words over: 25%; if >600 words over: -50% • Must have at least 2 pieces of additional evidence that support your claims such as from the Team Charter, internal team communication, Project Requirements drafts (including TA and CI feedback), excerpts from your Engineering Notebook (meeting notes, site visit notes, notes on teamwork, etc.). • Must not have any appendices. All evidence must be included within the body of the document. • Must follow the formatting guide • Must have a cover page • Must have a correctly formatted file name: TA_Student Name _Student Number.pdf • Must be a PDF uploaded to Quercus • Must have an Ouriginal report generated for the CI to see • Must be handed in by DUE DATE Purpose of This Assignment Reflect on how your team operated and determine one transformative situation that 1. triggered a change to your team charter and/or 2. expanded your understanding of teamwork dynamics. Determine why this happened to learn how to set up a more effective team charter and/or team in the future. More specifically you will: • Identify and describe a situation that influenced, or should have, a change to your Team Charter or your understanding of teamwork dynamics.

Engineering Strategies and Practice APS111 - 2023 Assignment: Teamwork Analysis (TA) • Analyse the situation to identify how the outcome of the situation is related to the team charter and/or team dynamics. What change should you have made to your Team Charter or interaction with your team as a result of the situation? Note that this change can include instances in which the situation you describe was not addressed at all by any draft of the Team Charter, but you claim it should have been. • Based on the above, address what specific content you would advocate to be included in your ESP II Team Charter. Describe how that content will impact interactions with your team members to create a more effective team environment. As you write remember: • Logic is important : Use an outline to give structure to your ideas and see how you are connecting all the parts of your report together. • Language is important : If writing is not your strength, give yourself extra time to proofread and get feedback.

Engineering Strategies and Practice APS111 - 2023 Assignment: Teamwork Analysis (TA) The Parts of the Assignment Question 1.0 Introduction In engineering writing, you want to be precise. An introduction can explicitly state what you are analysing and why. Your introduction must set the scene for your situation by the component of your Team Charter that you are analysing. This section must include the following information: 1. A brief overview of what this report is for. 2. A brief description of the situation and your reasoning for selecting the situation Answer: When working as a team, understanding the complexities of group dynamics is essential for achieving success. This paper delves analyzes the transformative power of time management and role adherence within our team. By examining our experiences with last-minute hindrances and the importance of sticking to assigned roles, we aim to gain insights into their profound implications on effective group performance and seek new ways to improve to ensure future growth and success in Engineering Strategies and Practices II and beyond.

Engineering Strategies and Practice APS111 - 2023 Assignment: Teamwork Analysis (TA) Question: 2.0 Description of the Situation Don't judge or analyze here - just describe the situation. Describe the actions taken by yourself and others and provide evidence that those actions happened and that you were there. This section must describe your transformative situation and discuss the actions you and others on your team took to influence the situation. Using a mix of writing and figures, this section must communicate the following: 1. Describe the situation itself: Summarize, through writing and evidence , the aspects you find to be most important to the situation. This may involve setting up the situation’s context if it emerged out of past events or if it is related to other course deliverables or work. Use evidence from your teamwork (such as excerpts from your Team Charter and Engineering Notebook; team documents, team communications) to confirm and describe what happened by adding them as figures. 2. Describe the actions you took in the situation: What did you do in the situation? 3. Describe the outcome of the situation : How did the situation end? Was it positive or negative? Answer: The situation at hand revolves around the completion of our Project Requirements Assignment and our challenges with time management and the lack of clearly defined roles. Throughout the assignment, our team encountered challenges in being productive during our time allotted time for the assignment and fulfilling our designated responsibilities as outlined in the Team Charter. This resulted in delays in completing the required tasks, leading to a significant amount of work being done until late at night, specifically until 11:34 PM, on the day just before the assignment's due date as displayed in Figure 1 below.

Engineering Strategies and Practice APS111 - 2023 Assignment: Teamwork Analysis (TA) Figure 3: Revised Team Charter 2 following my teams late night submission meeting. The situation had a mixed outcome. While the team managed to complete the assignment by the deadline, the last-minute rush and the lack of role adherence had a negative impact on the overall team performance. Feedback received highlighted the need for improved assertiveness and accountability in order to avoid similar challenges in the future. In summary, the situation involved the APS111 tutorial team facing difficulties with time management and the absence of clearly defined roles. The evidence, such as communication logs and meetings, supports the occurrence of the situation and the actions taken by the team to address it.

Engineering Strategies and Practice APS111 - 2023 Assignment: Teamwork Analysis (TA) Question: 3.0 Analysis of the Situation Be sure to give evidence of your actions that will help the reader understand your claims, argument, and thinking. The analysis will tie the situation to a change in the Team Charter and/or team dynamics. The analysis is intended to guide future teamwork, so analyzing your situation through the lens of the Team Charter revisions and/or changed team behaviours will allow you to analyze and assess the potential causes and impacts to the situation you describe. This section must include the following information. Using a mix of writing and figures, communicate the following: 1. Your analysis of why the situation happened: Why did the situation occur? How did your involvement affect what happened in the situation? 2. Your analysis of the aspect of Team Charter and/or team dynamics you identified in your introduction: How did this aspect enable this situation to happen? You may connect this to a component that was present or absent from Team Charter to analyse the situation further. 3. Your analysis of the proposed change: What change did you make (or should you have made) to your team charter or how your team interacted? How did/should this change affect whether a similar situation in future instances? Answer: Henceforth, our team should aim to ensure we have finished our sections in smaller increments rather than the whole assignment the night before, and should set a realistic and earlier deadlines to prevent our team from rushing. It is important to note that my role, as indicated by the Team Charter, was to “ serve as a leader responsible for organizing the team during work periods and facilitating engagement ” . In hindsight, there were opportunities for me to be more assertive in my leadership role, ensuring that team members adhered to their assigned tasks and encouraging better time management practice

Engineering Strategies and Practice APS111 - 2023 Assignment: Teamwork Analysis (TA) influence the outcome of the team while ensuring that all of the necessary coordination tasks are completed. o As you move forward in your undergraduate education you will work in many different teams and will need to define how your teams should be structured and should function. Reflecting on how this team’s structure did or did not work will enable you to determine what you should include in Team Charters and what kinds of team behaviour you would want to foster in the future. • What is a transformative situation? o A “situation,” for this assignment, is defined as a singular event with a beginning and end. For example, a decision made while editing the PR would be a singular event. o Transformative situations are events that a team undergoes that alter how they work together – it transforms their work structures. These situations can vary in magnitude – some may be small and could appear insignificant to someone outside the team, others can be large and significantly affect how a team works together. Transformative situations can be either positive or negative; these are situations that cause a team to solidify a particular process that was happening tacitly to make it an explicit practice, or to rethink how they work because things did not go well. o The situation you will describe and analyse in this assignment is one that should have triggered a change to your Team Charter or have influenced team dynamics. The change can be related to any section of the Team Charter or any aspect of teamwork. • How do I discuss a situation that was very emotional? o When describing a situation, it is relevant to discuss your own emotional response to the situation or different actions taken. If your emotions affected how you behaved in or contributed to the situation, it is critical that you introduce that in the analysis. Reflection plays a critical aspect in this process. After reflection, we can — to some extent — objectively describe our own past emotional state without being overly biased by that emotional state. It is important that we do so, so that we can come to understand what led to our response and begin to understand the emotions we experience in teamwork. o However, it is also critical that you do not ascribe emotions or motivations to others’ actions unless you have explicit evidence of this (e.g., a text in which someone describes what they were feeling). When describing your own behaviour, it is possible that you know what your intentions were, but it is impossible to know what the intentions of others were. Do not assess why others behaved the way they did – simply document their actions and analyse how you behaved in relation to those. • What if the situation I am writing about did not trigger a change to our Team Charter? o When writing this assignment, think about the change that should have happened as a result of the situation. Then, describe the change that should have been in Team Charter (or that you would put in a future Team Charter). o Reflect on how your team operated and identify something that may have been missing from your first Team Charter that you happened to do anyway. Using the

Engineering Strategies and Practice APS111 - 2023 Assignment: Teamwork Analysis (TA) evidence of the situation, justify a change that should have been in your Team Charter (or that you would put in a future Team Charter). • What sections of the team charter should I use? o Students often analyse their Ways of Working for this assignment, however you can reflect on any content in your team charter. Roles and contingencies are also common areas that need constant reiteration within high-functioning teams. • What can be considered as team dynamics? o Team dynamics is a broad concept and represents the way in which team members behave and the psychological processes underlying these interactions within the team. When team members engage in design projects, their behaviors are interdependent and from these interactions, there is a team emergence of attitudes, motivation, and cognition that influence how team members feel about each other, their team, and team projects. So you may want to analyse how similar or opposing attitudes or values may have influenced how you have experienced teamwork in ESP 1. • What kinds of evidence can I use in this assignment other than the team charter? o You may want to include evidence from your notes, your peer evaluations, the team’s Google Drive (or revision history), MS Teams or other communication platforms. You may want to use screen capture tools (to gather evidence) and markup tools to highlight the important parts of the evidence. You can present your evidence using figures in the document. • Where can I get help? o See below for help resources before you turn the assignment in. Note that you will not receive feedback before the CDS is due, but if you ever want to discuss the content of your Teamwork Analysis so that you can start to implement your ideas before the CDS is due, you can ask your TA and CI, or visit a coordinator at office hours. Doing this assignment may (and should) give you ideas to immediately help your team work better, so please reach out if you want immediate feedback on your ideas for improvement. o Piazza for short questions o Your team’s CI and tutoring centre to brainstorm ideas, get help forming an argument, get advice about your choices, and get help with grammar and sentence structure o Perusall – review the readings about the Team Charter from the Hybrid Teaming Handbook o Lectures: During Week 09 there will be a lecture which will explain the assignment components and walk you through completing the assignment. o CIs will not answer questions 48 hours before the deadline. • What benefit might teamwork support provide? o If you are trying to understand why a specific situation happened, or are struggling to identify your contribution to a situation, reach out for Teamwork Support to have these conversations. CIs provide support with how you describe and analyze your situation to make it clear. Making sure that you understand the situation is critical before you begin writing about it.