Alison Thompson

• New members were onboarded quickly and we seemed to get a few pretty involved

  • Having PMs help with onboarding was suuuuuper helpful

• More opened ended tasks than normal

• Po

Smile Khatri

• Lots of new members and we had engaging tasks.

• Good mentorship happening from leads/PMs to newer members

• Work sessions started to get better near the end of term once we had more maching tasks

Sohee Yoon

• Quick integration for new members (e.g., scheduling bootcamp reviews)

• For a lot of PDM issues, Smile and Nathan were available right away to help out on discord and in-person

• We had a good amount of tasks this term that varied in skill level and got a lot of members interested (e.g., some task had multiple people interested in it and that encouraged collaboration too)

Evan Janakievski

• A decent amount of new members

• Good progress on competition tasks

• I think good support from PMs this term

  • Noticed the impact a lot more this term being onsite compared to last term

Nathaniel Li

• Tasks were interesting for new members

• In my own personal experience, PDM issues helped me teach new members best practices for using PDM (very ironic)

• Members were open to collaborating, especially with new members which helped with larger projects/tasks

Camilo Artigas Alos

• Great collaboration on most projects, I would say comp was the best. The integration between both payloads and landing gear went great.

• I really enjoyed the machining work sessions and flight tests were great as well.

• I received all the support I needed from any PM that assigned me any given task.

Alison Thompson

Smile Khatri

• Stay more on top of projects, especially Eclipse (m also guilty of this)

  • If there’s no progress being made on certain tasks, we need to call the shot and just get it done or have a conversation w/ whoever is assigned

• More engaging work sessions. At the start of the term, work sessions were pretty dead. Idk, maybe we need to create a more fun environment to be in to work (idk how to do this)

• Don’t be afraid of having tough conversations early on. If you think something won’t get done by EOT, we should talk about it early enough to create a plan.

• When we have new members, I think we should develop a presentation or invest some time in mech meeting to introduce the team to new members, inform them about all the projects going on and what they can contribute to. I head multiple people who had no idea what projects were going on, or even what the team was doing. I remember autonomy did a presetation at their first meeting, maybe we could do something similar to get everyone (including old and new members) on the same page.

• PMs to be more involved at work sessions

• Need to use the mech deadlines callendar more, I don’t think I opened it once during november (this might be just me)

Sohee Yoon

• I agree with Smile, like PMs should be more involved at work sessions (I’m guilty of this) and flight tests (for me)

• More communication between PMs if we’re working on the same project (e.g., Eclipse). I know when I got sick, I should’ve communicated with one of you to help out with the Fuselage that way we wouldn’t be behind for the Fuselage

• This is more for me but as a PM I realized I have a lot of responsibility for the design of parts so I have to be thorough in planning designs and consider the big picture. Planning ahead of time early would make it a lot easier later on

• I think when we’re planning out projects and deadlines, we should consider the backlog of tasks near midterms and exams. I think we did consider it but still ended up pushing a few CAD reviews

Evan Janakievski

• Scope of Eclipse changing over time to help speed it up, wasn’t as impactful as we thought it was

  • For future projects, need to definitely come up with full idea before designing so everyone is on the same page, not multiple people working on parts that will relate but not designed to be integrated

• Documentation can definitely improve

• Work sessions could be improved

• More communication

  • Within Mech, but also team as a whole

    • Noticed EE did not give most up to date board or all contraints for some tasks

Nathaniel Li

• As Smile mentioned, staying on top of projects was lacking

• Some specific issues and solutions:

  • Reassigning work

• . Some things to consider:

• Checking on progress more often

• Setting a “progress update” date along with the deadline so members

• As a PM, I noticed that I spent a lot more time (than expected) chasing people down for updates/responses

  • Is it worth creating a “process” for reassigning work when a member isn’t responding?

• Work session engagement could def be higher (including myself)

• I second what Evan mentioned about fully scoping projects before starting them

• For scheduling, it’s worth noting that:

  • As a term progresses, expect that active member numbers will decrease

  • Buildup of tasks around midterms and finals should be planned ahead more

Camilo Artigas Alos

• As Smile mentions, documenting work sessions would be benefitial. We can have a PM do a confluence doc for each, so we remember what we couldn’t accomplish and set realistic expectations for the next work session.

• I believe one of the factors of low work session attendance (at least in the beginning) was the fact they ran at the same time as flight tests, if we could schedule around that (which I think we did towards the end) would probably increase work session attendance.

• I think creating a more in-depth PDM troubleshooting guide on confluence would be benefitial. I’m mostly thinking about it in terms of a flow chart, if you get this error do this, if this doesn’t work try this and so on.

• I believe that if PMs/Leads need help with anything they should feel free to reach out to other PMs for help on a given task or project, I feel like this would’ve helped for Eclipse.

• More socials would be nice to keep the mech team as a community. We should also work on keeping it engaging and as Smile mentioned, a BOT presentation could go a long way.

• I also agree with Evan’s point of fleshing out the big picture of a project before diving into it.

Smile Khatri

Eclipse

• Noting down what’s left to be done and developing a plan to make it happen early next term.

Smile Khatri

IMACS

• Discuss w/ Nathan regarding the current project. Does he want it done by mid next term?