Name: Sumukh Prakash Kane

ISE 544 Assignment No.1

Spring 2017 (Prof. Ali Nowroozi)
Due date: 7th February, 2017.
USC ID: 2733952034
Category 1:-Psychological State. (Inter-Team Analysis)

All members of the Inova team had the same psychological state while approaching the exercise. As
all members of the team were pretty enthusiastic in carrying out the task at hand. (Evidence: for
category 1: X̄ =2 and R=0).Meanwhile the Trusted team which essentially comprises of a single
member seems to be least excited about the exercise and the member of the Trusted team is
completely bored by the thought of this task which is quite evident by the average value of X̄ =5.
The Inova team had a well-defined set of deliverables, however they had incomplete guidelines and
no information regarding the design criteria was provided. The team was also free to choose their
own team design, this degree of freedom which was provided in performing the task surely
contributed towards generation of excitement in the minds of the team members. The boundless
brainstorming session that would have been carried out by the team would have also generated
further more excitement on account of the varied ideas and possibilities that each team member can
think off. On the other hand the trusted builder also has clearly defined goals but the additional
information stating that this exercise shall have no effect on the students grade and the absence of
design guidelines tend to discourage the Team from working for the exercise and they thus show
minimal excitement for the same. However this theoretical data is not always reliable. This exercise
for the Inova was highly time bound and given the short duration of the exercise the team members
were never fully exposed to the stress and challenges associated with such tasks and hence they
probably ended up showing high level of excitement throughout the task. In case of the trusted
team it is not necessary that the lack of credit for the exercise discouraged the team from working
for it, the mere fact that the exercise completion was to be succeeded by a break might have
distracted the member of the Trusted team which resulted in the team showing minimal excitement
towards the task at hand.

Category 3: Experienced creativity and innovation. (Intra-team Analysis)

The Agile team unanimously believed that they experienced high level of creativity and innovation in
performing the exercise and this fact is quite evident from the data as the scores for category 3 for
the agile team are X̄ =1 and R=0.The agile team had a well-defined goal with limited but precise
guidelines for making the building. They however had no guidelines for building the airplane and
were thus dependent on their imagination for completing the airplane task. It is therefore obvious
that the members of the agile team experienced a great degree of creativity and innovation. The
agile team also members enjoyed a great degree of autonomy and thus they were encouraged to
innovate and present their ideas in absence of any formal barrier that may exist in a manager-led
setup. In this case the exercise is time bound and thus the team members are bound to try out the
very first idea they think off. The team shall most likely try to work out their very first idea instead of
innovating and thinking of other possible ways. The priority of the team shall be to have something
to present at the end of 15 minutes or they risk losing all the points, in such a case innovation and
creativity may well take a backseat. The low score (10 points) for the exercise may well discourage
some members of the team in working and innovating as they may thing there is very little at stake.
Category 6: Individual evaluation. (Intra-team Analysis)

The members of the great team show significant disparity in there idea about how the exercise
evaluates an individual’s performance. They seem to have a neutral opinion as a team as there score
for average team value (X̄ ) is 2.6 which indicates the team members don’t think the exercise does
neither a fair nor an unfair job in evaluating individual performance. The range of observed scores
(R) is 4 and this implies significant variation in the opinions of the team members. The Great team
has well defined goals but they are compelled to follow the manager based structure. The exercise
empowers the Leader in dividing the team into small groups which perform a specific task. The
Leader is expected to provide guidance to the team while managing conflicts and is solely
responsible for evaluating team members. This gives the Leader exceptional amount of power and
equivalent responsibility which may make the team members nervous as there is too much at stake
(50 points).The team members may thus be happy about the work breakdown methodology
adopted in the exercise but shall not be happy about the fact that there evaluation solely depends
on the Leader. Results obtained from such analysis may not always be accurate as some parameters
which contribute to the result can be easily manipulated. The great team is a group that essentially
comprises of too many members. The mean of such data is pretty accurate but the range can be
misleading at times. In this case there is a significant possibility that only one of the members
answered differently from the rest of the team that resulted in a high value for range (R-4).The data
however indicates that there is significant disparity in the thinking of the team members.