How do we ensure a healthy, productive team?

--- Team Processes

There are two portions to this reflection. It's a little more time-intensive, but we can't stress enough how important it is to set yourself up for success for the remainder of the semester.

• Individual: You will read and reflect on software engineering team processes and management. Write up a one-page reflection, bring it to the class to discuss with your team.
• Team: Your team will come up with a 1-page process plan that includes roles of individuals, processes you'll adhere to, and platforms you'll use to support those processes.

In CSCI 205, students' experiences with Agile process vary. You should reflect on how the project environment in CSCI 479 is different from that of CSCI 205. You are working with a client. That means that you could have changing and/or unstable requirements. It also means that the scale of your project is larger, with more complex moving parts. It is up to you to decide how to handle the challenges.

A key point of this semester is that we are not going to dictate precisely how you are to operate (more give you a framing). However, we do expect significant reflection and action surrounding your processes. This is your opportunity to really buy into professional processes for productivity.

Individually

Before you continue, make sure you review and familiarize yourself with the agile processes you learned CSCI 205:

• The Beginner’s Guide to Scrum and Agile Project Management
• A Pretty Good Summary of Lean, Agile, Scrum

Spend some time coming up with the structural mechanisms by which your team will operate. Amy Ko’s Cooperative Software Development has a fantastic summary of the research and practices surrounding effectives teams. Look over at least two of the following:

• Communication
• Productivity
• Process
• The Discipline of Teams (by Katzenbach and Smith)

Once you have a good sense of what makes an effective team, answer the following questions in 1 page. You may use bullet points if you’d like:

• Come up with a COMMUNICATION plan that involves knowledge-sharing tools (from Amy Ko article on communication). How will you communicate with your team, client, and the instructors? How often?
• Come up with a plan to reduce Sedano’s taxonomy of waste to make sure that your team is PRODUCTIVE. What tools will you use? Who is responsible for what?
• Similarly, how do you expect to amplify your team’s PROCESS. If you are familiar with senior design, you’ll know that you should be using an agile scrum development process. However, those guidelines still leave a lot of ambiguity and interpretation that you can sculpt to your particular needs. Consider how to integrate notions of awareness, ownership, distance, product value. How will you know what’s happening in your team? Who owns what?

Make sure you have a copy to bring to your team in class for discussion.

As a Team

Now that you have come up with plans independently, merge together as a team and get on the same page. By the end of class, you should have a bullet point list that answers the same questions that you answered above. Name this file team-name-team-process. For example, if your team is named as Go-Bison, then the document should be named Go-Bison-team-process. Save the document in your team Drive folder! Share it with all team-members and your instructors.

Each member submit both the indivudal reflection and the team process to our Google Classroom. Submitting links do the documents is fine (or even prferred). The key is that your instructors will be able to read and grade your work.