This is no doubt that Varsity Chronicles has failed. But the good thing is that its story is not a stupid one. It's full of passion, efforts, creativity and friendship. But I'm sorry that real life is not like fairy tale. Happy ending is really very hard reach. Lack of large contemplation, detailed plan, faithfully implementation and perseverance makes Varsity Chronicles failed eventually. The two sides of this story make it more valuable for us to think carefully.
Perseverance is the most important!
I always believe that with perseverance, people can do anything, no matter whether they are smart or not. Focusing on one thing and being perseverant to do it, failure cannot happen. This is also the main reason why Varsity Chronicles failed. At the end, almost all the team members of Varsity Chronicles could not insist. With all kinds of excuses, they gave up finally. I agreed that they faced many difficulties. But difficulties are the most normal things. Before they began, they must had expected. No matter it's part time job, or morning class, all are excuses. The real reason why they could not insist is that they did not really love and believe their project from their heart. During the semester, they had pressure from CS3216 and except staying in Campus, they had nothing else to do, so they put all their energy in their project. However, when vocation came, they had so much free time to do so many things, their attentions were easy to be distracted. If they really believe their project, they will insist. But the truth is, they gave up.
Team members are the most soul of a project!
A team is constituted by different people who has different personalities, feelings, and personal lifes. So how to combine them in one group, giving them an open and positive working environment and letting all of them to find a right place to give their gifts is the hardest problem. It is, however, also the most essential problem of team work. If a team has perfect teammates, solving all the other problems are just the problem of time. Here a perfect team doesn't mean that every teammate should be the strongest, but means that each teammate should respect and complement each other. Every role should have a member to play. Only in this way, all the teammates can get alone with each other well and improve the effectivity and quality of the project inderictly.
Technical skill is also necessary. Varsity chronicles has a good originality. But at last, it hasn't been realized. Parts of the reason is that, in technical side, its teammates are not strong enough. For example, the team used HTML pages first, then switch to flash. This wasted them a lot of time and turned sour their original enthusiasm. If there was a professional technical guy in their team at first and give suggestions to and evaluate the feasibility of their plans, maybe they could avoid a lot of detours and implement their plans better.
Now I have a very good team for my final project. This doesn't mean success. How to avoid a *sad ending* really needs much more thinking =]
