As I had pointed out earlier (in my previous blog post), being a team of like-minded people helped us gel as an outfit in the early half of the semester. We were to find out later that this by itself was one of our biggest shortcomings.
Let me expand on this problem. All of us are alike on many different fronts. Both while separating topics for our oral presentations as well as dividing responsibilities for our project, we found out that all of us were intent on taking up similar tasks/responsibilities. This was because our skill sets overlapped significantly. All of us are good programmers, natural leaders, speakers more comfortable while presenting topics with heavy content rather than abstract ones and so on. This is a problem as it restricts our variety to a great extent. An even bigger problem arises when we are left with no choice but to pick tasks outside of our comfort zone. This is bound to happen as we need to do a variety of subtasks for each submission with limited resources at hand.
We could solve this problem by proposing a system wherein a person can ask for what he/she wants and will be assigned the task on a first cum first serve basis. Still, this solution does not work fairly as team members who are extroverts tend to gain an advantage over others as they are the ones who generally speak out first. A possible advantage of this system is that it gives the silent members of the team an incentive to speak out thereby indirectly enhancing their communication skills. The least we could do is to ensure that the same guy does not suffer every time.
Every coin has two sides. Even this problem has helped us in certain ways. We were forced to move out of our comfort zones on a few occasions and hence were exposed to newer things. In this process, we had an opportunity to explore newer arenas which may be to our liking. I am quite sure that we wouldn’t have taken the pains to experiment otherwise and thus wouldn’t have realized our full potential.
Personally, I feel that I have gained a lot in this process. Opening presentations was not my forte. I now feel more confident when I am opening presentations. If I had been given the choice, I wouldn’t have opened presentations and thus would not have realized that I actually like it.
This problem – a result of our team composition – cannot be avoided but can definitely be resolved. It is our responsibility as a team to ensure that no team member suffers extensively because of a conflict of interest. I can tell that we are proceeding in the right direction from the way we have split tasks for our upcoming submissions. Hope that this good work continues!
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ReplyDeleteLakshmi, you brought up a fantastic point. What you propose is a fantastic idea but then again there isn't a full proof way of solving such a problem. Given the setting the team is in, the scope of the project is really limited. As a result members would think their talents is not valued, not appreciated and we have to avoid this. To overcome this problem, we first have to recognize the scope of the project is limited. And because of this, members have to give in to another and not hog all the most 'challenging' or 'difficult' problems to showcase their talents. Each team member must recognize the project is not all about that particular member's effort but rather it is the entire team's effort that counts. It is only when every member of the group is able to see this point, the team would then truly maximize its potential.
ReplyDeleteI think the entire team would agree that through this project/module both CS2103T and CS2101, we have developed areas which we aren't too comfortable with in the past. And with that I do hope the team would continue to keep up the good efforts as we head into the final phase of the project.
Shawn Teo Chee Yong
This is a really big problem we need to solve. Similar strengths make us easy to communicate but cause problem in dividing tasks. The "unwanted" tasks are always there, and we cannot just ignore them. I think we may take turns to select the tasks, and change the sequence of selecting. As a result, each one has equal chance to get his wanted part.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that we need to take different kinds of jobs, even the tasks are not of our interest. This is a good chance to learn different skills and improve our ability of dealing with different tasks.This is quite important when we start our career because the boss will not care a lot about our interests and just want the jobs to be done.
Therefore, let's try to take some tasks different from our strengths and we may develop a new strength.
I myself think that this is a must-have problem when dealing with serious projects and I even feel lucky when we encounter this. When I dicided to take this module in this semester, I didn't hope to just put all my stamina into coding my project and then come out with something that I called "I tried my best". Instead, I would expect to see something that can really encourage me to find and do something new. I think this problem must happen because we, second-year student in Computer Science, are not experts, we can only some certain things, and we have to deal with different things other than our interests. Dealing with problems that are not our strong points is a must, and we must take it seriously. I think we should split the research task, so that everyone can complete his tasks and can contribute to the project. It is a good chance for us to learn to do something new by yourselves. I think this could be a good solution to this problem.
ReplyDelete