I feel that communication is essential in our daily lives as it allows one to disseminate information, express emotions, and build relationships and more. That is why it is important to possess good communication skills. In a team, for a task to be done in an efficient in an orderly manner, communication is high essential.
After our groups were finalised during the first tutorial, each group was given a oral presentation topic and we were given a specific date on when our presentation would take place. Our group decided to exchange numbers as the basic form of communication was to sms each other. Initially, due to the different workload that each individual had in a group and also because of the proposed dateline we were given, there was not much communication within our team until the following tutorial.
By the next tutorial, we were instructed to discuss about our presentation topic and create an agenda for the next meeting during the next tutorial on 20/01/2012.
During the creation of the agenda, that was our first form of communication from outside the class. Terence emailed a draft of the agenda for us to see, I later suggested adding on a few more features to the agenda and after a few emails of comments from each member, we finalised our agenda for submission. From this, we can see that communication is very essential in a team as we can gain different opinions and ideas from each other and we can help identify each other mistakes that we usually can’t seem to see it for ourselves.
On 20/01/2012, we had our first official meeting to discuss about the CS2103T project, and minutes I had taken down for the meeting can be seen in next post. Our first major obstacle happened during this tutorial, when Miss Lee told us that our presentation was supposed to be on 27 Jan instead of the initial proposed date of 31 Jan. Because of that, we were taken aback by the fact that we had to get things done in less than a week, and the following week was Chinese New Year! Quickly, we discussed about the possible free time we had and tried to organise a possible meeting date. However, since our group consists of entirely Chinese, we usually have family commitments such as reunion dinner and visiting during the Chinese New Year holidays. Our proposed meeting was then decided to be on the following Wednesday.
Nearing the end of 2nd day of CNY holiday, I feel the urgent need for an online meeting so that we can better prepare ourselves for the meeting on Wednesday. I then smsed and emailed my group members to see if we can have an online meeting during the night. As it was quite sudden, Terence wasn’t able to make it, and we decided to just continue with the three of us. After much discussion, we finally decided on the scope of the project and the different roles we have. We then had a meeting on Wednesday to get our presentation topic prepared and had another on Thursday for a rehearsal. During these meetings, we had a closer bond and had a better understanding of each other’s timetable.
I felt that the sudden change of date for our presentation was our first test of the strength of our team. Everybody did their part and contributed, and compromised our free time so that we can get things done properly. Hence, I feel that our team has good teamwork and I personally hope that we can achieve greater in all our future work! I would therefore like to emphasise again that communication is very essential in a team as if there wasn’t one, we would not have been able to come out with a successful presentation. But of course we could have been better, and I believe through good communication and teamwork, we will be able to improve and do even better!
In life, we have to be prepared to face up to many obstacles, and these challenges are useful in giving up wake up calls or testing ourselves. It is so true that we have undergone our team's first major setback with the pressing of time. Communication between us has been smooth and on top of that, we are self-motivated, sharing the common goal of getting the work done. I am glad that we took it well in our stride, pulling off with a relatively good result of this test. I am sure that we can work together and produce greater results.
ReplyDeleteJoel, thanks for the detailed definition of communication. I felt the same as you on the importance of communication and how it affects individuals. Thanks for stating the different forms of communication that we used, and that, each different form of communication mode has its own upside and downside. Such that sms could only serve as a notification board to alert the recipient that there’s such message that need to be read. For a more in depth discussion, one needs to use an application to be able to communicate. Such as the MSN and Google document to allow each individual to voice out their opinion conveniently and at the same time, allowing others to see. If negotiation needs to be done, we need to have face-to-face meeting.
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