BUS477

Course Title:  BUS477

Instructor:  Ean Jackson

Team Members:  Jay Rolston (BUS477), Annie Wong (BUS477), Vivian Teng (BUS 477),  Ali Sedighi Moshkenani (ENSC201), Daniel Naaykens (ENSC201), Pranav Gupta (ENSC201), Victor Cheng (ENSC201)  

Team Member Skill Inventory 

Jay, our CEO is the leader of our team.  He is an entrepreneur for 3 different successful businesses in Whistler and therefore draws on an array of past experience when making critical decisions.  He has strong public speaking skills and keeps the team organized and focused on the goal at hand, encouraging contribution from all team members. 

Annie, our CFO, is responsible for the finances of the business.  Drawing on an array of past business experience, including time spent working for Revenue Canada, she ensures that the project stays on budget and ensures potential investors have a very sound financial section of the business plan.  She also acts as the secretary; keeping team members updated on the meeting minutes via email, schedules meetings and helps communicate information between the Engineers and Business Students. 

Vivian, our VP of Sales and Marketing, focuses on the marketing plan of the business.  With a marketing concentration and past experience she is always thinking of new and creative ways to promote the product, conduct market research, and an efficient analysis of the data collected.  She will research competing products and provide input about the product design to the Engineers.

Pranav is the leader of the Engineer students.  He communicates directly with Annie and Jay, ensuring that the Engineering side is updated with the project progress.  He keeps his team motivated and working toward common team goals.  He also provides his technical skill and input to facilitate the product development.

Daniel is our technical specialist.  He is well trained with Photoshop and Powerpoint. He designed both our company and product logos and will be utilizing his technical skills and engineering expertise to develop our prototype.

Ali is the technical support and research assistant. He can analyze business systems and user needs then perform analysis of functional and technical requirements. In addition, he can research on different industries for utilization of engineering solutions in local and foreign markets and ensure optimal technical solutions in business processes.  

Victor is our engineering assistant. He assists Pranav and Dan, keeping both the business and engineering in mind. He will use his technical skills and adapt them to a business-like situation to ensure we have a professionally engineered product, which is comfortable and highly desirable to consumers. 

Learning Team Goals 

1. We want to win the competition.  We feel we have the right team chemistry and expertise needed to succeed, anything less than victory would be seen as a disappointment.  Regardless of actual outcome, we all feel that we will gain a valuable real life experience from this project.
2. We want to progress our team skills.
3. We want to learn the intricate components that a winning presentation should contain.
4. We feel we have a product that can actually succeed on the open market, and win or lose, would like to move forward to the next step after this project is over. 
5. We will contact the industry experts to assess the viability of the product.
6. We want to learn how to patent a product and other ways to protect intellectual property rights.
7. We would like to learn the best way to structure the company to maximize our ROI.

What are potential barriers to the achievement of these goals? 

We anticipate encountering several barriers along the path to achieving our long-term goals:

Communication barriers – Business and Engineering students have very different schedules and work loads and may not be able to attend to every single meeting. It is significant that we keep every team member updated with our project progress. Electronic means such as email, phone calls, and text messages will be used when face-to-face meetings are not possible, however there is a chance that an electronic message could lead to ambiguity due to the lack of context.

Geographic barriers – Team members live in different regions of Greater Vancouver, we have different schedules, classes, projects, and jobs, which increases the difficulty of every group member being in attendance at every meeting.

Market Barriers – Since our product is designed specifically for women, it could prove to be a challenge to convince a male investor of the products potential.

Ground Rules

1. 1.     Every team member should contribute as much as they can to help the project succeed.  
2. 2.     Every member will provide input during the meetings; and if a member is unable to attend that meeting, it is his/her responsibility to send everyone his/her ideas through email.
3. 3.     If the team member is unable to attend the meeting, he/she should give a notice to the team within 24 hour prior to the meeting.
4. 4.     Every member should participate in the project and meetings equally with his/her strength and skills.
5. 5.     Regular meetings should be held once or twice a week at the beginning of the semester, and 2-3 times a week towards the end of the project.
6. 6.     Every team member should be responsible for their designated parts/duties and completing them on schedule.
7. 7.     Every team member has the right to have their voice heard, including any problems/concerns they have with any of project progress. All members will be including in the ensuing discussion and decision-making process.
8. 8.     Face-to-face meeting will be our major method of communication, resorting to electronic means such as Skype, MSN or Facebook only when necessary.
9. 9.     We will share electronic files through email, using file-sharing servers such as www.rapidshare.com or www.yousendit.com, only when required.

10.  Every team member should respond to every email being sent out from the group to inform the group that he/she has a clear understanding of the project’s next step.

Conflict Management

1. Annie has been appointed to be the group mediator and handles any internal conflicts between team members.  
2. If a team member has a problem or concern with another team member is encouraged to bring it to the attention of the mediator.  If a mutually beneficial solution cannot be agreed upon, then are encouraged to speak to the CEO, and if necessary, the professor.
3. All disputes, which lead to a critical decision needing to be made, will be settled by means of a vote.
4. The team should engage in other team building situations, outside of the actual project such as informal gatherings, allowing the team members to get more comfortable working together.     
5. We are only as good as our word.  All team members must be held accountable for the words they speak.  If conflict should arise from a team member not completing his/her assignment, they will be reminded of what they said they were going to do and accept the repercussions. Group members seeking necessary help from other team members can avoid this situation.  We are all moving toward the same goal and will find a way to pull through together.