I wasn't always around in the conversations, but I was there for most of the time on the first night (minus a couple of hours or so where I went out to a friend's house) and after that, I did everything that was asked of me, and I had a lot of contact with Amy over the next few days.

On tasks like this on a forum, if you're not the PM I don't think it's ever possible to know the full story of what goes on in your team, as sometimes things happen privately between two individuals or whatever. It's not possible to know everything that went on, you can just go on what you do know. With me at least, Amy was a really good team leader. I can't speak for her success with the others, but from the others' comments they all appear to agree with me.

I think Katie did a pretty good job as PM. The passion and hard work she showed in this task was really commendable, and her organization was great, in terms of giving us deadlines for our parts of the task and sending out several PMs to make sure we had everything ready right before the deadline. I think at times she may have been a little bit out of her depth, and that's purely because I think this may have been the wrong task for her to be PM in as she did say she had limited knowledge in board games. I think it's a shame as she's a really strong player and would have made an amazing PM in last week's task for example, but I do think she did a good job overall and definitely improved as the task went on.

I only talked to George for a bit on the first night but I understand that he has problems with his msn and he was in contact with Amy via PM.

I think Katie had the correct level of enthusiasm, drive and willingness to do well, but lacked in direction and organisation. Especially on the first night, we went around in circles quite a bit and it felt like she didn't really know what our concept was herself. I also feel that she was easily flustered and couldn't really control the team when we were all there (except Luke) throwing ideas about and discussing things with the product. Although her passion and absolute belief in our product is wonderful and I'm glad she was backing something she could get onboard with herself!

Eliza is right. On this task the majority of what I did was done privately via me and Amy rather than on the discussions, but I don't think that stopped me from doing the best I could. I did ask Amy if she was happy with my contribution, and she said that she was.

That was actually Jack's suggestion

Yeah, George suggested an 'Escape the house' style game and that then developed on to the final 'Heroes vs Villains' setting which was suggested by David, some of the aspects such as the reversible board were suggested by various members of the team.

I thought the majority of my team worked well and performed the tasks I delegated to each of them to a good standard. I think David, Niall and Justin in particular performed extremely well and shown creativity and good ideas. Justin's idea which was our concept was great and I really liked his design although I did find his initial refusal to change parts of the idea to cater to what the market research wanted a little odd. I feel if we're going to do to market research the results shouldn't just be ignored like Justin suggested. I do think he worked extremely well however aside from this.

I was happy overall with my management of Helios. I do think like Amy said it was difficult to assert my authority day 1 but I think I was stronger after that and myself and the team worked really well with each other. I was also extremely disappointed that Lucas hardly contributed anything to the task for the second task in a row. For instance, starting the pitch whenever everyone else had finished their parts and at the same time the deadline I set was.

If the boardroom is truly about honesty, it is with honesty in which I will respond. Katie was, unfortunately, not the strongest PM. Katie came across frequently as flustered, disorganized, and unsure of what the product was. This was particularly problematic as, seeing that I came up with the concept of the game, I should have felt confident in what it's premise was. It, however, often times turned into the opposite - I felt the least sure about what was really going on. We shifted to and from topics a lot of times, leaving a lot of looser ends open and not tied up, leading to the illusion of progress without actual results. Similarly, Katie made a lot of sudden shifts in her opinion that confused me as to what the truth was regarding both her beliefs and the product itself. This approach sounds as though I hated working with Katie, which isn't the case. Katie has great ideas and is a strong candidate. Her passion, as mentioned, is unparalleled, and her drive and determination to make our product succeed was very commendable and necessary. Overall, Katie is a good candidate, however, I would be inclined to say that her project management skills were not the strongest in the world.

Also, since I am posting this after Katie posted her comments regarding me, I would love to inquire when I ever suggested we ignore market research?

ETA: Forgive the length of my post, I actually have to leave right now to go to work.

I suggested the reversible board to Amy and then we suggested it to the team.

Actually Eliza, it was me who came up with the reversible board after we had discussed broadening the game that we had originally planned to make it more appealing. I suggested it, you said you liked the idea, and then I pitched it to the rest of the team.

Nobody can fault your enthusiasm and drive for this process and particularly this task it has been noted, however, a couple of your team members (not just Justin) made comments in their evaluation (and yet they're not making them here) that you were "the source of of every problem on the task" and that you didn't really have a clue what you were doing.

On the other hand, my advisor was extremely impressed with you.

I'd like to give you the chance to defend yourself against these comments.

I find it interesting you pointed this out. I said at the very start of the task I didn't have a huge interest in board games and I put myself forward for PM two hours after the task begun because it was clear no one else was going to. I did feel even though I don't have an interest in board games that I have the skills to lead a team, encourage participation, delegate well and make good decisions which I feel I did.

Just a question, as I'd already said I didn't have a huge interest in board games earlier then why didn't you put yourself forward for PM whenever I did if you didn't think I was suitable for being PM? I find it interesting you thought this at the time yet never once addressed it until we're in the boardroom. Care to explain?

Katie was extremely enthusiastic and hard working. She made sure that everything was done on top and was willing to help out with every aspect of the task. Overall, a very good PM.

I do think that she had a few difficulties as the game sometimes progressed in a different way from how she imagined. But she did a good job.

Oh yeh. I suggested doing two different versions for boys and girls.

Well I'd say my knowledge of board games is worse than yours, so I definitely wouldn't have been the right person to be PM for this task. And you're right I did agree to you being PM, as the task had already been going on for quite a while and nobody wanted to be PM and it was getting quite ridiculous as we really needed to properly start, so you offered and I agreed. I did think you'd be good in terms of the delegating, hard work, organization parts of being PM and you most definitely were, I only meant 'out of depth' in terms of your knowledge of board games - which I didn't think would be a huge issue at the time at the time you offered and as I said, we really needed a PM and you offered and I didn't have any strong reservations against you at the time, so the logical thing to do would be accept.

I felt Justin and to a lesser extent David shown no belief in me throughtout this task. Justin was extremely rude at times. I actually remember counting the number of times he asked me if I could read which was well over ten - I made this point in my task evaluation regarding Justin. I don't think I was the source to the problem on every task. I'll admit my faults which I did in the task evaluation, it's hard to drive a team who criticise you for wanting to change parts of their ideas namely Justin. I took risks throughout this task by selecting an unexisiting product for an non-existing market as it's more unique and more likely to rejuvenate the market and at times it did feel like Justin was trying to take over as PM, I felt I shown creativity throughout the task and came up with loads of ideas and different concepts which I explained in my evaluation.


Also Justin, I'm just finding this "the market research isn't important" quote to upload.

Sorry, but I just find your decision to criticise me because I don't play many board games and it's a board game a little bit hypocritical considering by your own self-admission you're in the same boat as me.

No one was going to put themself forward - it took 2 hours - see the other thread - 2 hours after the task starts Justin says we haven't picked a PM. I'm not afraid to take a backseat. I took risks and one of them risks was putting myself forward for PM since no one else would take that risk.

For the record, I was planning on putting myself forward as PM, but I wasn't around when it was being decided.

I have to admit for this task I probably was. I was away for most of yesterday as I had work experience and then I went down with awful hayfever and couldn't do anything. However, I do believe that on wednesday I was there for most of the discussion and I really contributed to the ideas and I did get involved.

I don't think it's that hypocritical as I never put myself forward to be PM? And I just want to make it clear that I'm not trying to criticize you as I actually think you're one of the strongest candidates in this process and even if we do lose there's no way I think you should be fired, and overall I was happy with your job as PM. I just made that small point as I wanted to be honest and that's pretty much exactly what I said in my evaluation - I don't want to say one thing there and another thing here. And yeah as I said that's why I agreed as we really needed a PM at the time you put yourself forward, which is why I agreed.

You're right, on the first night I didn't have much belief in you as a PM because I think you allowed yourself to get too flustered and caught up in everything. You also sent around a PM to us all explaining our idea which was quite different to Justin's concept which we all agreed on. And then I was baffled at your insistence at putting in princesses, tiaras and gold to make it more appealing to females when that was a) very extreme and b) unnecessary.

Okay. Moving on to the results.

Harmonia, I think your idea is a big step-up from the last task. I could see this board game really taking off and while Heroes VS Villains in itself isn't exactly original, you managed to make it your own within the structure of your board game...

Helios, the amount of detail put into your work was very impressive and in particular the characters you made. It's clear that a lot of effort went into this... I'm unsure about whether this game would really take off as there are other established games that are very similar...

So for that reason, the winners of this task are...

HARMONIA. Well done, you may leave the boardroom.

Helios, we'll be discussing what went wrong.

Well done Harmonia! Good luck to the rest of our team