Week 7 Lab: The Handover That Isn't

A roleplay lab — one team hands over a project by slide deck alone; the receiving team discovers live what the deck left out

19 April 2027

Groups of four, split into two teams of two. One team spends the first part of the lab building a project (any small, quick build — a short procedure, a simple diagram, a mini-spec) and then hands it over to the other team using nothing but a slide deck, exactly as week 7’s lecture describes NASA’s own handover process. No live explanation beyond what’s on the slides.

Before the lab#

Read week 7’s lecture — the Mars Climate Orbiter case is your model for what “each side, correctly, believes they’re done” looks like from the inside.

In the lab#

The handing-over team builds for fifteen minutes, then presents their deck without additional narration. The receiving team then has to actually use or continue the work from the deck alone, and has to say out loud, in the room, the exact moment they discover something the deck didn’t cover.

Submitting#

A joint writeup, from all four: what the deck assumed the reader already knew, and whether that assumption was reasonable or just familiar to the person who wrote it. Due Friday 23 April, 5pm.

Groups of four (two handover pairs).