Week 3: Teamwork

Monday

This week had emphasis on getting to know our groupmates and identifying our collective strengths and weaknesses so we could understand how to combat them. Luckily I happen to get along with my whole team, which smooths a lot of things over. Nevertheless we spent time picking out our preferred preferences to get to know each other better.

What are your work preferences?
I find I do my best work late at night in total silence – not even any music, because I need to hear myself think. While I do like to work in a group setting, especially in necessary collaborative tasks, I moreso like it for the social aspect, and find myself anxious to perform work in a space where I think I’m being watched.
In this way I am a bit similar to my team – most of us like to work late, by ourselves.

What are your strengths?
I am a gifted writer, and can analyse text for research easily. Additionally I consider myself a competent hard-edge 3D modeller, and a great 2D artist. Designing is something I am good at, whether its designing assets, art, or words.
Most of my team are also good 3D modellers, but Hugo and Parker can code far better than I can.

What are your struggles?
Mostly I struggle with time. I have horrendous perspective on how long it takes to get tasks done, so I either start much too early (and realise consequently I don’t need to have started so early, drop the task because I’ve done most of it, and procrastinate on the sliver that’s left up to the deadline) or too late.
Managing time is another relatable issue, so we’ve agreed to track our weekly tasks through GITHub to make sure we’re all on track.

How do you prefer to communicate?
I prefer to communicate in person, with supplemental texts. I am a firm believer that when making a creative project, you need to use your teammates to bounce ideas off and become inspired by, and this is a crucial factor to keep steam for the project.
My entire team is as one on this. Therefore we’ll meet as much as possible, and check in with a team meeting at least weekly.

It was reassuring to find my group struggles with a lot of the same issues that I do!

Communication:

• Check communication preferences
• Say what you mean, mean what you say
• Clarify understanding
• Direct, clear
• Don’t make assumptions about non-verbal cues
• Give praise and recognition for tasks
• AVOID:
  • Ambiguous or infreuqent communication
  • Assume everyone in the team has the same needs
  • Use inappropriate technology
  • Failing to provide feedback

Stand-Up Session:

A stand-up session is a classic technique in agile style development and weekly sprints, were you update your team about your weekly tasks. This should be done daily, lasting only 15 minutes, and helps to share critical information. Typical questions are:

• What did you do yesterday to help achieve the sprint goal?
• What will you do today to achieve the sprint goal?
• What, if anything, is impending or blocking progress?

The last task was to make a roadmap for the project. Roadmaps are a quick way to assign tasks and break down how long they will take, and can be updated weekly.