Team milestones

Continuation of the team reorganization phase, failure and cancellation of several projects.

Completed

The CATS-2023 Conference was held, where students of the already failed TESS-UA-2023A reported on their preliminary results. Considering the circumstances, the conference was much more successful than we could have expected.

Preparation for TESS-UA-2024 began, including the re-recording of the Variable Stars Lectures course, which previously had numerous problems.

In July recruitment for the new Wikipedian Unit began, and its fundamental principles and goals were changed. Its main task now is to slowly but steadily fill Wikipedia with the highest quality articles. The new unit began to achieve significant results by the end of September.

Incomplete

The period from July to September 2023 was very unproductive. To successfully implement the planned projects, it is necessary to maintain a certain level of work intensity. Consistency and rhythm in efforts are extremely important. If this condition is violated, projects are either significantly delayed or completely fail.

• Three more major projects were either failed or canceled.
• Delays of 3-9 months became a "normal" occurrence for most other projects.
• Several more team members left, and about 4-5 people stopped responding to messages regularly.
• Such high turnover made it almost impossible to plan more than a few weeks ahead.

Almost all attempts to systematically reform the team, unfortunately, failed.

Conclusions

At that time we were not focused on drawing conclusions or planning slow, long-term changes. We urgently needed to "fill the gaps" that had appeared in almost all units. The very existence of our organization was at stake. The team managers shifted into survival mode.