A COE industry project team is made up of up to four MBAN Student Project Analysts, a Project Advisor, a Faculty Advisor (usually from the OpLog division), the Managing Director, and Technical Analyst(s) if necessary. On the industry partner side, the team also includes the Executive Sponsor, the project’s contact person, and other staff members with technical or business expertise who may be helpful to the project.

At the beginning of the project, the Managing Director establishes the main project goals together with the industry partner’s Executive Sponsor. While the project is carried out, students are the lead project analysts and receive support from the project team to achieve the goals. They conduct interviews with subject matter experts, collect information, and report progress in periodic meetings. The Project Advisor coordinates the project activities and updates with the industry partner through their project liaison. However, as the project progresses and students demonstrate responsibility and leadership they are expected to communicate with the industry partner more independently.

Accountability

In industry projects, a COE project team as a whole is accountable to its industry partner and the students are individually and collectively accountable to their COE project team(s). While a Project Advisor is ultimately responsible for supervising the student team members, the COE’s goals are for the students to take on as much of the project work as is reasonably possible and for students to progressively demonstrate greater leadership capacity as the project progresses. The COE staff creates supportive conditions for the students to build their technical confidence and their analytic leadership capacity.

When students work at a partner’s site, they should be respectful of the partner’s team structure and report to their designated contact or supervisor on site, who may direct their work to a lesser or greater degree. It may happen that students on site are assigned tasks or directed in a way that is not consistent with the direction set by the COE project team. Students are strongly encouraged to bring any such inconsistency to their full COE team’s attention; we will then explore the situation in depth and develop an appropriate response together.

Ideally, the seeming inconsistencies will help refine our understanding of the question, the contextual factors, or the nature of the solution we are working towards. It may also be that there are fundamental differences that will need to be resolved at the level of the COE’s Managing Director and the partner’s Executive Sponsor. In all cases, it is incumbent upon the students to clearly inform the COE staff at their earliest opportunity when it feels like such a situation may be arising, so that we can all work together for the best possible outcome.

Student Project Analyst

The MBAN students are the lead project analysts and are responsible for the delivery of project work. Based on capacity and performance, they will increasingly act as the day-to-day operational leads for the project team and are expected to demonstrate leadership and increasing independence in this role. Their main responsibilities in carrying out the project are:

• Conduct analysis rigorously and with integrity, delivering accurate work in a timely manner.
• Identify project problems, propose solutions and directions, and consult with the project team for assistance in resolving them.
• Report honestly and accurately on progress and status of project tasks.
• Prepare weekly project reports and run project review meetings.
• Prepare presentations for the industry partner, with the support of faculty and Project Advisors.
• Ask for Project Advisor approval before communicating with members of the industry partner.
• Share the work equitably among the team members, seek advice when appropriate and handle feedback/criticism constructively. If applicable, make sure Technical Analysts are adequately briefed and have clear guidance regarding work delegated to them.
• Keep project documentation updated and organized according to project documentation guidelines.
• Prepare the project’s final report and accompanying materials (e.g., poster, one-pager).

Project Advisor

The Project Advisor provides research and technical guidance to Student Project Analysts on a day-to-day basis, and ensures timely and high quality deliverables to industry sponsors. Formally, the Project Advisor supervises the Student Project Analysts, but their approach will aim to support the students in taking as much leadership and ownership of the project as possible.

• Attend project meetings and define project activities and data requirements in conjunction with students, faculty and staff.
• Coordinate and schedule project meetings and activities, internally and with the industry partner.
• Facilitate communication and meetings between Faculty Advisors and other project team members as needed.
• Provide day-to-day assistance to students with operations research and statistical methodology, software, modeling and analysis. Advise the students on how to plan work, guide them in efficient use of their time. Resolve conflicts between students or Technical Analysts regarding work planning and distribution.
• Review and critique students’ presentations and reports to ensure professionalism and accuracy.
• Approve student’s communications with members of partner organizations.
• Run periodic update meetings with client, introducing student participation when appropriate.
• Supervise project documentation.
• Supervise Technical Analyst allocation and training.
• Advise the COE Director and Managing Director of any significant challenges faced with any of the projects, whenever they arise.

Faculty Advisor

Faculty Advisors are the methodological experts available to a project. They assist the team by explaining theory, by guiding research into complex technical problems and by providing insight into industry direction. They may also, on request, anticipate client and business needs and provide advice to students to help them prepare before milestone meetings with the industry partner.

• On request, advise on appropriate analysis strategies and guide students on operations research and statistical methods.
• On request, provide feedback in presentation dry runs and review project deliverables (poster, final report).
• On request, attend important meetings with the industry partner.

Managing Director

The Managing Director is accountable for delivery and management of the overall project portfolio.

• Establish project outcomes and deliverables and determine appropriate analysis strategy together with Faculty Advisor. Assess options and direct project to best course of action.
• As time permits, attend weekly review meetings.
• Review and approve all the project deliverables, such as presentations and reports.
• Ensure appropriate resources are available for the project and manage conflicting priorities.
• Advise the COE Director of any significant challenges faced with any of the projects.

COE Director

The COE Director is accountable for ensuring the academic integrity of the internships and to help resolve any significant project challenges should they arise.

• Ensure that MBAN student projects are appropriate for their training.
• Check in with student teams and COE staff regarding progress.
• Meet with MBAN students and COE staff if any significant challenges arise in a project.
• Assign Pass/Fail marks for BA 509: Analytics Consulting Internship (in consultation with the Managing Director, Project Advisors, and Faculty Advisors).

Technical Analyst

Technical Analysts (TAs) support industry projects through technical support with technical tasks such as programming or data analysis. TAs are assigned to projects throughout the project season depending on the project needs, and interact mainly with students and other TAs. The primary role of the work of TAs is not to perform work that should be carried out by Student Project Analysts—i.e. teams are not to delegate the main work of their project to them—instead, they support projects by applying their specialist technical knowledge, and they help meet deadlines when a project’s workload becomes too high for team members to accomplish on their own.

• Perform data collection, cleaning and analysis.
• Design, develop, populate and maintain databases.
• Design and develop decision support prototype tools using Visual Basic for Applications, Python, R and other programming languages and tools.
• Assist in model development, such as simulation, optimization, forecasting or other mathematical and systems modeling.
• Assist in documentation related to the analysis, models, tools, and project reporting work that they perform.

Conflict resolution

The COE encourages open communication and cooperative problem solving. Although conflict is always stressful, it is important to recognize that conflict is a normal part of working in a team, because team members will inevitably have different values, expectations, priorities, or even understandings of the facts at hand. Most conflicts can be resolved productively if addressed directly and quickly.

When facing a conflict, the people involved are strongly encouraged to first try to address it among themselves in an open and respectful way.  If the difference can’t be reconciled, it must be referred to the next level in charge (Project Advisor or Managing Director).