Article

Lessons learned in the first thee months

What did go wrong and how can this be prevented?

At the complete beginning of this project the start was not as fast as we had wanted. First the five students had to be divided over two KITA projects. This caused some delay, so we would advice the next group to divide the groups already before the summer. In this way you can immediately start with your project. To make sure you lose as few valuable time as possible we would also advice the students to make an appointment with last year’s students, preferably in the first weeks of the minor. The students can tell a lot more in a shorter time and in a nicer way than any report could ever do.

Secondly we would advise you to start communicating as soon as possible with all the contacts involved in this project. In this way it is relatively easy to find out who is responsible for what and which contacts are most important for the project.

Last we would like to mention that we encountered some problems concerning the financials. The TU Delft was under the assumption that the students would only have to pay for their accommodation and food etc. Only in a later stadium it became clear that the students also had to contribute to the project costs. The policy of the minor is in general that students pay for their own expenses, but not for the project costs. If not all the money is available for the project, fundraising can be done. When we found out that fundraising was needed, it was already too late. Next year this should be communicated better, so that no problems will arise concerning the finances.