ME 491 Group Assignment due on 10 October 2016

Your team assignment for the week is to produce three documents.

1. First draft of Team Contract
2. First draft of a functional decomposition for the Lego Rescue project
3. Report on internal search for two of the functional blocks for the Lego Rescue project

Each of these documents are to be submitted to separate D2L drop box. There are group drop boxes so any member of your group can submit the document. Your group also has "Locker" on D2L that allows you to share files.

Each of the three items in the assignment are explained below. First, the general objective and requirements of the item are explained. Then a paragraph starting with Assignment summarizes the requirements for that item.

I recommend that your group practice your chosen method of task delegation and collaborative document editing. Although group meetings are helpful and even necessary to come to final agreements, your group will be more productive if you delegate individuals (or small teams, say of two) to do the writing necessary to complete this assignment.

Team Contract

The team contract describes the shared values of the group, and the procedures by which the team conducts its business. A web search shows that there are several templates for team contracts for Capstone projects. We'll use the template (MS Word document) as a starting point to develop simple contracts with the following items.

1. A brief statement of shared values and priorities.
2. Roles, e.g. do you have a manager (or two managers), or rotating managers, or task leaders or ?
3. The preferred method of document collaboration, e.g. Google Docs, MS Word with "Track Changes", D2L locker, Dropbox, github or ?
4. Frequency, default location and time of group meetings.
5. Preferred methods of asynchronous group communication and collaboration, e.g., email, group text, Slack, Trello, Trello+Slack, or ?

Note that these items do not reflect the details of the design project you are working on. Rather, the contract defines how your team collaborates to achieve a shared goal.

Your preferences for organizing group work will likely evolve during this course. That's OK. Just get started now to figure out what works for you and your team mates. This is a first draft.

Please read section 3.8 in the textbook for background information and ideas about making group decisions.

It is not easy to develop a team contract. That is one reason for starting with a first draft. As you work on your contract, keep these ideas in mind:

• The contract must be agreeable to all members of the team. Period.
• Do not delegate the task of developing the team contract to one or two team members. Everyone needs to participate in developing the contract, even if one or two members are responsible for writing down the words.
• Everyone needs to agree to the final form of the contract.
• If you can't agree on ideas advocated by some team members, then the idea should not be part of the contract.
• By signing the contract you (individually!) agree to accept and adhere to the terms of the contract.
• The goal of the contract is to define a mutually compatible set of principles and practices. When you adhere to your contract, your team functions better, and that's the reason for having a contract.

Finally, given all the words written here about team contracts, you might get the impression that the contract needs to be a long and complex document. In fact, I recommend that your contract be short (less than a page) and limited in scope to what you agree upon to make your team function effectively, efficiently and professionally. As complications arise, say from difficult team interactions or inefficient processes, you can add to or modify the contract. That said, the contract is not a superficial or fluid document. Make changes infrequently and with care.

Assignment: Using the template (MS Word document) as a guide, create a brief (one page maximum), first draft, of your team contract to address each of the five items listed above. Note that the template has a place for your team name, and a signature block for all team members. Please update the document to include your team members names.

Each team member should sign the contract to indicate their commitment to adhere to the principles in the team contract. You can change your team name from the one initially assigned to you. Submit your contract to the D2L dropbox for your team contract.

Draft Functional Decomposition

Create a one-page sketch of a functional decomposition (or functional analysis) for your device. This decomposition does not need to be the final design, but it should represent a plausible method for transporting the lego minifigure from the tower to the stretcher on the playing field.

The diagram should have 4 to 5 blocks with arrows labeling energy, material and information flows between the block. Each block should be a function that is independent of the implementation

Assignment: Submit (via D2L as a stand alone document) a draft of your functional decomposition. One submission per group

Internal Search for Two Function blocks

Choose at least two of the function blocks from your functional decomposition and identify at least three plausible ideas for implementing the block function. The ideas should be generated by a group brainstorm that generates many ideas (many more than 3). Reduce the list (obtained from brainstorming) to at least three ideas that the group will purse with further.

Assignment Submit (via D2L as a stand alone document) a summary of your internal search. The document should provide the following information for at least two function blocks

• List of ideas from brainstorming session for each function
• Short list of up to three more refined ideas obtained by down-selecting from the brainstormin. Each refined idea should have a simple hand sketch.