An Egg with a Character

Majority of us have an opportunity to explore their skills not only in class where the assignment is to create a perfect case to deliver an egg but in every day life. Assuming that very often we lead and manage people, we all should be experienced enough to work well in a group. So why then the assignment to construct a perfect case for the egg was so challenging? Was it because the members of the group had little information about each other’s background and skills? Or was it because the task was challenging? Or may be the reason was lack of experience in creating the structure? I will try to address these questions further in this text.

In the planning process we went through a few stages. First, we defined our goal – to deliver the egg and not to break it. The objective was to construct a perfect case so that the egg will remain unbroken after the case hits the ground. Another objective was to use the material that we were given as more efficient as possible. Finally, meeting the deadlines was one of the most important parts of the assignment, so we got that under control as well.

In the second stage of the planning process we were trying to find out each other’s skills in order to assess the different parts of the assignment. The biggest strength of my group I think was desire to work effectively on the project under pressure. The weakness, I guess was lack of engineering skills and absence of similar project experience in the past. Some of us had basic understanding of how physics works with gravity and mass. But it didn’t matter that much for our assignment. Therefore, our weakness didn’t really hold us back because in this particular case knowledge was not as important as desire of a group to work together.

As far as I remember, we didn’t develop an alternative plan. We had two designs that differed a bit. But after discussing each one of them for five minutes we picked up one . I don’t remember our group thinking about an alternative. And I guess that is partially why we didn’t accomplish the result. There hardly was a moment when we would stop and think “Hey, this is not going to work, what are we going to do?” Unfortunately, we faced exactly the same situation when our planned design lacked the required material. While constructing the case it appeared that 8 straws would not make the design, which we wanted. Luckily, we figured out a solution right away and made some adjustments to our design.

We also didn’t really discuss who was going to be responsible for what. But there’s a reason for that. Since the assignment didn’t (from the first look) require very complex design, estimations and activity (glue the straws to each other, cut the paper etc.) we didn’t really assess different tasks to different people. Indeed, why would you decide who is going to hold egg or straws, who is going to cut the straws or glue them to each other, who will draw the design? And I realize that it was one of our biggest mistakes. Had we done this, the group would work more efficiently.

We also didn’t revise the plan. I think that it’s interesting how critical we were in the beginning while discussing the designs. Once the design was chosen everyone was inspired by the awesome idea. We had some disagreements regarding the distance that the egg had to be from the walls of the case. But for the most part we were so convinced that our project would work that we didn’t hesitate to think about alternative. 

Finally, I would like to thank all the members of my team for their cooperation. I think that overall we did great. Everyone was involved. And even though the egg was broken (just a little bit) and we didn’t get 10 points of the extra credit, this experience was priceless. It was a lot of fun too!