Minutes of first meeting on Week 2, Friday, 20/01/2012.

Minutes taken during the meeting:
- Enquiry on topic-requirement
- Work plan shared with rest of group members
- Discuss limitations to the work plan (outcome was to drop plan)
- Re-analysed the question
- Identifying problems and discussion on how to tackle them
- Brainstorming different program designs and having a common consensus to a particular design
- Understanding the different roles (i.e. students, facilitator, organiser) in the question
- Geting ideas from existing databases

Blog #1: Communication and team behaviour

By definition, communication is the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing, or signs (Dictionary.com, n.d.). Communication involves the sender to convey a certain piece of information to an intended recipient, which could be an individual or a group of people. Communication doesn’t need to occur in real time, meaning as long as there is a way for the recipient to receive the information, that alone itself is communication. This also means that communication is not limited to distance and time. In recent years, communication has evolved vastly. Instead of having to meet face-to-face, we can communicate through phone calls, emails and even long distance real-time chat (MSN, Skype, etc.) and many more.

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!