How to lose in SE 477

Taken from Andrew Myer, Cornell University
Modified by Dennis Mumaugh


 

Ten proven ways to make your group project harder:

  1. Designate one sucker in your group as master hacker and have her do all the work. That way she will burn out 3/4 of the way through the course and no one else will be able to finish the project since only she understands it.
  2. Decide that one member of your group is useless and don't invite him to group meetings.
  3. Don't bother to attend meetings, after all they really don't need you. Just take credit after the fact.
  4. Combine techniques 1 and 2: decide that all the other members of your group are useless and you are the lone master hacker. Charge off and write everything up without talking to anyone else. Unless you are very unlucky, you'll make some bad assumption that forces all your planning to be thrown out anyway.
  5. Have a different person implement each task. Unfortunately, this will work fairly well on the first few, but by the third or fourth task the person implementing it will have no idea what is going on, and will have a much larger assignment to work on too.
  6. Have everyone implement separate pieces of the report with no discussion of how they will fit together. Ideally, split the group into two or more factions that don't really talk to each other until just before the assignment is due. Then there is no chance you will be able to glue the ill-fitting pieces together.
  7. Opposite of #6: Work extremely closely all the time, spending all your time talking among yourselves rather than doing actual  work the group will slow down to at most the speed of one person. For extra effectiveness, everyone simultaneously edits files in the same directory. That way you won't figure out which of four entirely different documents reflects the final consensus.
  8. Don't start until three days before the assignment is due. Then pull three all-nighters in a row. Lack of sleep will ensure you write bad designs. With luck, you will get sick and blow some other classes too!
  9. Don't ask the professor any questions when design problems come up; just put off working on the project and hope the problems will magically solve themselves before the due date.
  10. Don't use any of the techniques that you learn in this class. This works best if you don't attend class at all, so you avoid polluting your mind with the course material.
  11. Don't bother doing any of the assignments; surely you are graded on only your final report, right? Count on the extravagant mercy of the course staff and on having lots of time later on to finish the report up. Of course neither will materialize, and you'll get so far behind that you can't finish the project!