Team Organization: Proposed Elements:
Team Objectives: Proposed Elements
What SPHERES is:
Team Organization:
The first thing to do in any team is organize it. We will organize our team so that it is modular, has deadlines and group meetings, and stages of development. The three main modules that we will divide among the group would be system requirements, programming, and testing. By doing this, our team will cover the legislative, operations, and logistics aspects of production, all of which are needed in order to create feedback so that we can improve the overall product. Plus, as the project is divided amongst the team, it allows for specialization on each module. Also, by knowing that each piece of the project will be modular, it becomes easier to upgrade at any time, and the project will also become easier to interlock or divide amongst ourselves. In addition to these groups, there will be the architect, who manages the whole project overall. The architect is tasked with the management of the project by managing each module’s development in a manner to keep it on task.
Our team will create deadlines and meetings throughout the entire project so that we can appropriately manage our time. There will be a deadline for each project module so that we can pace ourselves accordingly. Meetings will be scheduled every other deadline. This way, the whole team can get together and tell the others about their module receive help and new ideas from the others.
Throughout the entire project there will be stages of development. First, we have to get a basic outline of the program that will get it to do what it says it will do. Then comes efficiency. We will need to create commands that will allow it to carry out its program in an efficient manner. Next, we will have to make it able to interact with the other programs and make sure that runs efficiently. When we have finished all that, we will combine all of the modules to make one, unified product, and test it over, and over until we are certain that it is as perfect as we can make it.
Team Objectives:
While working on the project, our team plans to gain a sense of synchronicity, specialization, and suprastructure and infrastructure. Synchronicity is very important for our team because, in order for everything to be developed correctly, every module must be on the same development stage. By keeping track of what stage each module’s development is in, we can focus our resources on getting the development of our bottleneck, so as to increase efficiency. Also, by being synchronized, we learn to be timely, which is a trait that most successful people have.
Specialization, as we stated before, comes from the team being separated into different modules. We will create a specialized task force, where each member makes a part that is structurally correct, and will interact correctly with all other parts intended to interact with it. By doing so, it allows us to quickly create the project with easily replaceable parts. While doing this, we learn how to design a module, which in turn teaches us how to design a dedicated project that fills its requirements by making quick modules to fulfill each task.
As we learn about our modules, we also learn about suprastructure and infrastructure. Infrastructure is a set of systems that make up a higher system. We work on the infrastructure of the project as we work in different modules. This way we increase the efficiency of each piece. By having the scheduled meetings, the modules are set to interact with each other to fulfill the set requirements, and satisfy the system they are in. This is the suprastructure, the higher level of a system, or the architecture of the systems. Then, by removing unnecessary parts of each module, we make the modules more efficient in the suprastructure. This allows us to complete the fully optimized product. Though this sounds the same as specialization, it is different as specialization is the optimization of processing a task, and suprastructure and infrastructure are the optimization of modules. By understanding the suprastructure and infrastructure, we learn about design and purpose, while staying organized.
In addition to learning basic team skills and design techniques, we also intend to learn other programming techniques in the project’s development. We also intend to gain some credit for participating in the SPHERES project. Most importantly, we intend to win.
What is SPHERES?
SPHERES is a tool designed by MIT and NASA in order to simulate what launching a object from the earth to space would be like. More than that, to us, the Yerkes’ tech club, SPHERES is an opportunity. It gives us an opportunity to design an optimal program in a team, and that lets us learn about optimal design and what working together in a team is like. This, in turn, prepares us for our futures as adults. Also, SPHERES is an educational tool. It teaches us about the adaptations of product and encourages modularity and competition. Thanks to this, we will strive to do our very best to win against our peers. By participating in the development of SPHERES, we not only learn to program and act as a team, but we also get the chance to work with NASA and real astronauts.
SPHERES is an testbed for experimental programs. At the moment it serves as a competitive business technique to write a program intended for use on the International Space Station. From this competition, we learn to model a competitive business plan.