Blog #2: Reflection on CS2103T Project - Communication

We have all identified that communication between members in a group or an organisation is essential to get work done effectively; thus, likewise for our group, we feel that communication, especially in the form of physical meetings are important if we want to be able to deliver a good presentation, project proposal, etc. However, having physical meetings is unfortunately not something we can do often due to the lack of free time among us and the vast distance that some of us have to travel to NUS, being one of the challenges we face as a group.

Apart from this twin module of CS2101 and CS2103T, each of us in the group have almost no modules in common, hence our timetable is very different for the individual. This poses a problem as there will be very little common time among the group members and it makes it very hard for us to have physical group meetings during the weekdays. For the weekends, each of us have our own individual commitment, for example, assignments from schools, for some of us, having to catch up with the lessons being taught in school, having to spend time with family and so on. Also, having physical meetings outside of school during the weekends is not very feasible and some of us are living in the eastern side of Singapore, having to travel a huge distance before reaching NUS, wasting 2 – 3 hours of our time just on travelling.

We have a solution for this however, and that is to have online meetings. The benefit about having online meetings is that there’s no need for anyone to travel, which means precious time will not be wasted. Also, due to the advancement in technology and availability of work sharing programs, online meetings can be a good substitute to physical meetings. Since we are not able to have much physical meetings, this is our common form of communication. For the creation of our project proposal, we had used online meetings extensively for our discussion. Prior to the online meetings, we had a small physical meeting in school due to the free time we had during the CS2101 class. From there we discussed about the workload division and we went back to do our individual parts.

Meeting online may seem like a good solution to physical meetings, but we soon realise that it is not as effective. Unlike physical meetings, there tend to be less effective communication between us as there is a lack of body communication, which has actually a huge percentage in effective communication. It’s harder to express our opinions on something, as it is quite hard to convince others through online rather than face-to-face. For example, when having an opinion about the design of the project, it is easier to physically explain to everyone on why you believe that this is better than another, and you can also draw out a visual presentation of what you are trying to explain. This is actually quite hard to do it online. There’s also another problem in having only one person talking at one time. During physical meetings, when someone talks, usually everybody else would just listen and concentrate on interpreting and understand what that is person is saying, however, we can see that during our online discussions, due to the lack of physical cues, we tend to be voicing our opinions and ideas at the same time, and sometimes, some of these ideas get pushed up and eventually ignored.

On top of online meetings, we sometimes discuss through emails and the benefit of this is that we do not have to be online at the same time. But this too poses another problem, and that is sometimes overlooking the email, or not reading the email because you didn’t know it was sent. We have our own solution to this though, and that is to notify each other through SMS after the sending of an email. Everyone of us tend to be beside our phone 24/7 and this serves as a good notification to tell each other than an email has been sent.

In conclusion, the challenge I have identified for our group is communication, and I mentioned about how important physical meetings are, and the solutions we have for it, that being online meetings and emails. Although online meetings and emails are not the best replacements for physical meetings, it definitely helps us to tackle the problem of communication among us and we strive to make our online meetings more effective, possibly through waiting for each other to voice our that opinions and ideas individual without any interruptions and so on.

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!