SERA Actuator/Project Management

« Back to the SERA Actuator home page

Initial Concerns

From prior experiences within the lab, the team was initially weary of using a free-form structure to organize the project. The formidable task required a much more hands-on project management structure to define goals, schedule time, and work in parallel. The team decided early on to focus substantial effort on forumulating a project management plan to allow us to succeed.

A Dedicated Advisor

Since none of the team's members had siginificant project management experience, Joseph Bondaryk was invited to help the team. Joe is a friend and former coworker of Gui Cavalcanti at Bluefin Robotics. Joe attended meetings once a week at Olin.

Appointing a Project Manager

One of the first decisions that the team made was to appoint a dedicated project manager to oversee the planning and progress of the project. The project manager had no technical responsibilities. Jeff DeCew agreed to serve in this role.

Creating a Schedule

An overview of the project's year-long schedule.

» For more, see Schedule.

The team created a gantt-chart schedule at the start of the project to direct work. The schedule included deadlines for specification and interface documents, design reviews, build times, and testing periods.