After pitching our project at several on-campus recruitment events, Crystal and I were lucky enough to gather an extremely talented group of students to work towards the completion of this project.
With a relatively large team, we found ourselves coming up against new challenges such as creation of new tasks and widening the scope, rather than narrowing it as we previously had. We've also had to quickly become accustomed to facilitating communication between the team members in this large team and facilitating discussions during our meetings while still maintaining a small-group community bond.
Even with our growing team, we are still working to make sure that we stick to our team-building goals from the beginning of the project:
- Help our team members to explore things they are passionate about.
- Don't force team members to do something they don't want to do.
- Make sure every team member is heard.
- Don't be afraid to "kill your darlings" when it comes to letting your team ideate.
Throughout my work in academic organizations, I've found that there is no quicker way to kill excitement in your team than to take something that excites them and make it into something that is stressful for them to think about. Thus, I've been trying to remind myself that none of this is more important than the happiness of the people I am working with. This team is wonderful and talented and I want the creation of Ascension to be a valuable experience for them, not a negative one.
Production has just barely begun and we are aiming to finish our vertical slice by October 12th.
It's a big project and a big team.
I have no doubt in my mind that we can make something wonderful together.
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