6ET005 Engineering Innovation and Enterprise

Guidance Notes

Individual critical Report

To ensure that your individual interim report covers the main points please
note the following:

Submit the Individual Critical Report as an individual assignment

The Individual Interim Report accounts for 25% of the assessment for
this module, and is also an important opportunity for individual students
to achieve recognition for the value of their individual contributions to
the group project. As a guide, a word count of 1500 - 2000 words
would be appropriate (excluding the attachments provided as
appendices).

Structure and Content of Individual Interim Report

1. Team Name
Team name or company name with your company logo.

Team Structure.
Produce an organisation chart prepared for your company.

Roles and responsibilities

Name 1 Marketing Director

Name 2 Engineering Director
Name 3 Intellectual Property Director
Name 4 Finance Director
Name 5 Manufacturing Director (if there is one)

2. Introduction

Write an introduction,
1. Objectives of this report
eg Our company was formed in 2010 with the mission to
commercialise a new technology for .. This report presents an
assessment of the progress made in developing our business plan,
from a marketing (or engineering, or intellectual property etc.)
perspective.
2. About your product.
3. About your company

3. Progress to date

3.1 Briefly summarize the overall current status of your groups project.
 Use a Gantt chart to explain the progress up to date.

3.2 Allocation of responsibilities

3.2.1 How did you allocate roles between yourselves?

3.2.2 Are you satisfied that the division of work has been reasonable?
3.2.3 As a group, have you mainly stuck to the responsibilities of the
defined roles, or have you worked together across roles?
3.2.4 List any key contributions that you consider you have made to other
roles.

3.3 Role of the Marketing Director (or Engineering Director, Intellectual

Property Director etc.)

3.3.1 Summarize the tasks that you have carried out and the
approach you are taking to fulfilling the responsibilities of your
role.
3.3.2 What do you expect to produce and include within the eventual
business plan for your product?

4. Idea Generation and Assessment

4.1 The final choice of product by the group was the .., but we
considered several alternative product ideas before making this
selection. (You might list them here, if you wish).
4.2 I came up with the idea for a (or was asked to look at the idea for
a .) and carried out an assessment of the product using a diagnostic
approach. This covered a range of commercial considerations, and is
presented in Appendix 1.

4.3 Present an assessment of a potential product idea that you have

originated. Use the example approach to product assessment
provided (Excel spreadsheet) to guide your consideration of the
various issues that affect commercial viability.
Pay particular attention to commenting on the market opportunity for
your idea, and also the potential for protecting the intellectual property
rights in your idea.

Summarize your conclusions on the merits or otherwise of this

particular product idea.

Include as an appendix to the Interim Report a copy of the Product

Assessment Matrix completed for your individual product idea.

5. Project Management

5.1 Comment on the difficulty or otherwise of organizing and managing the

contributions of the team.
5.2 Describe how the project was managed, i.e. that you held weekly team
meetings, allocated actions and took minutes. (Include a schedule of
meetings with names of chairperson and minute taker for each
meeting. Preferably tabular form)

5.3 What did you do in response to the minutes, were actions followed up?

5.4 Did all team members work equally as hard, are there any mitigating
circumstances that made it difficult for you to participate effectively?
Consider their contribution for each task and calculate their average
contribution for the project. Use a table to represent it)

Quantify the relative value of the contributions made by team members

to the overall project, eg share 100 points across the team members
(including yourself) according to their contribution to the project.

Include as an appendix to the Interim Report a copy of one set of

minutes / actions that you were responsible for producing.

6. SWOT analysis

Identify and summarize your view of strengths, weaknesses and risks in the
business plan for the product (e.g. was it a good product choice, what
problems have emerged, do you still believe there is a good market
opportunity).

This could be presented as a simple bullet-pointed list, if appropriate.

Comment on corrective actions you have taken, or are taking, to deal with the
problems that have emerged.

T.S.Peiris
Module Leader