Project Reflection

Overall, I really enjoyed the Pitch Deck project. I particularly enjoyed the setup (ie. being given a company rather than creating one from scratch), because it forced me, as well as my team, to work within the given constraints, as well as to work on a product that we may not have found necessarily ‘sexy’ or exciting. These types of constraints feel similar to my past jobs where you may not have much say in what projects and services you work on, as well as what teams you work on, but you still have to dive in and do your best, regardless. Working on this project, with this fake company, cemented the idea for me that, in some sense, businesses are very difficult to alter once they are set in motion. Once a few core decisions are made during the founding and inception years, it’s pretty difficult to un-root key decisions, especially if the company is making money.

This project also reminded me of my past jobs and the ever-growing backlog of “cool things we’ll build one day” fully knowing we’ll never get to build those things. I think dreaming and vision casting – especially in a class setting – are important, but after we sat down and began to hammer out the details; I was reminded of all the trade-offs, distractions, and competing priorities you fight through to get a project completed. I think the longer you work on a project, the longer you realize that ‘core functionality’ has a long tail – supporting just 1 more use case – and you never get to build the thing you wanted to build. (ie. you said “We’ll build this first, which will allow us to build THIS next” You never get to build next). I think Christina or Laura mentioned in class that you “never get to build what you want to.”

Interpersonal Dynamics Reflection

In regards to the team, I enjoyed working with both PA and Andrea. I think we worked fairly well together and at a high level, were able to execute the project, though not without a few hiccups. I think the core of what I wish I would have done differently, and how I would approach collaboration were I to do it again, would be to focus more strongly on communicating with my team.

Our main form of communication outside of class was an iMessage group chat. During weekly sections, we generally planned work out and made adjustments we needed to, on an ad-hoc basis, throughout the week via text. I think I would have preferred and tried to lead by example, by being more intentional and regular with my communication. 

Toward the end, I would communicate my work to the team by sending messages with three main components: ‘Summary,’ ‘Next Steps,’ and ‘Full List of Work.’ I wish I had started this practice sooner, as well as potentially crafted plans to produce key deliverables several days before their final due date. Though this requires individuals to get work done well in advance – which is admittedly hard for me at times – this would have allowed us to solicit feedback from each other; and allow our team to leverage the power of multiple minds on problems, rather than siloing ourselves across distributed work (which is good for productivity, but I think it’s always wise to obtain feedback and iterate if possible). 

Additionally, I had concerns about the product direction early on, before our pivot, which I discussed with Nick after class. I wish I had brought these to my team’s attention earlier – when I first had them, rather than after our initial pitch to the “product council.” As a side note, I think because I had a strong hand in the initial direction of the product, my tendency to dream unrealistically big was in full force early in the product’s lifecycle (again, not a bad thing per se, just something to be aware of). I think bringing this up earlier would have saved the team a lot of strife further down the line, prevented us from having to rework many of our slides, and kept us all on the same page as to what product we were offering.

In the end, I enjoyed the product, was proud of how well our team pivoted our product halfway through the project, and am excited about the future of GSPhotoCo!