Week 3 Retrospectives

Group Status Report

Status

Morale

Inidividual Status Reports

Alberto

• What went well:
  

  I really like how the team has been responding to the different tasks and challenges so far. When presented with the challenge to reconsider our original project idea, we were able to have an open team discussion where most team member were comfortable able to share their ideas. By being respectful of everyone's opinion, we were able to all come to a consensus of what project we were going to pursue. In addition, I really like how everyone is always attending all of our meetings and discussions, with no absences so far.

• What I learned this week:
  

  The main thing I learned is that we should have not jumped that quickly into talking about the product. After our initial discussions, we had to jump back to the beginning and reconsider many things. It is natural to want to start being creative and building; however, I now know that the first step one should take is talking to the shareholders to understand the scope of the task one is assigned. I also now know how important the process is; still, I believe the "right process" keeps being very abstract until you are finally implementing. The more projects you work on, the more you can perfect your process.

• What can I do to improve:
  

  I want to keep the process always at the top of my mind and the team's priorities, by focusing on the way to do things things right before looking at what we are building. I want to talk to the customer more regularly, and also make sure that whenever I am going into a meeting I know clearly what I want to get out of it and also with a clear idea of what our tasks are. This is not to say I had no clue of our meeting agendas before, but I feel like it is important to prep and research the discussion beforhand, rather than just coming up with a mere agenda.

• Inidividual morale:
  

  I feel good and confident about the team. We all seem to be willing to take the project seriously and to put in the work that is needed. I started the week feeling a little discouraged and stressed given the fact that we were on the wrong track. Now, however, we sorted out our issues and we are on track with the rest of the teams. In addition, knowing that I can rely on the team definitely makes me feel less worried about our success and less overwhelmed with my schedule. As far as our final project idea, I am relieved we went with a simpler project so we can reallt focus on making the process right rather than making the project right.

Alex

• What went well:
  

  Since this week's tasks involved group discussion and brainstorming, I'll reflect on our group efforts. I think our team did a good job thinking creatively about different project ideas and deliberated these ideas in a fair way that respected everyone's opinions. I think it was also a smart move that we spoke directly with our user (the professor) to get a better grasp of their needs and expectations. This helped us better understand the nature and scope of the deliverable, temper our own expectations, and think in more a user-centered way. In light of this, I think that we were able to simplify our project ideas while still allowing for the possibility of additional creative features, time permitting.

• What I learned this week:
  

  One takeaway I have from this week is thinking in a user-centered way. I might want to do things one way, but over the course of the week, I found myself contunually trying to bring it back to the user: is this project/idea/feature in line what the user needs, and why or why not? In conjunction with this, I was reminded that it's important to have some level of communication with your client instead of doing ideation 100% independent from them. Other things I learned this week from Part 1 of Shape Up were that, during the ideation phase, it's beneficial to: try to identify potential risk up-front, walk through a use-case of a feature/project as if you were the user (helps reveal cases or experiences that might not have been considered yet in the design), carry out breadboarding as means to find a sweet spot in "specifying" design components, and think about constraints before ideas.

• What can I do to improve:
  

  Going forward, I think I will want to be better about having a user-centered mindset and trying to spot risk ahead of time. On the more technical side, in order to best support my team and work towards a successful project, I need to put some time into learning more about any languages or tools we end up deciding to use for development, as my knowledge of web development is abysmal. I think I can also stand to formulate and provide an opinion (on anything) more often.

• Inidividual morale:
  

  I'm somewhat bummed that the form that our project will take will be simpler and involve less creativity than we may have originally imagined. However, I think that my stress level has settled a bit since we have shifted to simpler project ideas, both because it means we likely will have less overhead, and also because the discussions that our team is having now seem to be more in line with the user's needs since we have come to better understand them. I'm also glad that we have been given the green light to be more ambitious if we want, and that we won't be penalized if we aren't able to fully succeed. Overall, I'm appreciative that after 10 weeks, it seems that we will have all learned something through experience, regardless. Separately, I'm a bit apprehensive about my lack of experience doing web development, as the last thing I would want to do is slow down my team. Not knowing how much extra time I will need to put into additional learning is a stress for me, but I'm excited to have the opportunity to learn new things and am committed to doing whatever learning I need to do.

Chang

• What went well:
  

  This week, our team decided on the project plan. During the brainstorming phase, in fact, I felt a little bit worry about the ideas. Due to the constrained time, entirely finishing a complex project might be challenging. After introducing our plan to the professor, we found the direction. We finally came up with an excellent project proposal, and all the teammates agree with it. Not so sophisticated, an exciting project.

• What I learned this week:
  

  Listen to teammates' opinions, and share my own perspective with them. Then we will have more choices to compare and decide.

• What can I do to improve:
  

  Do my best to finish my tasks! Come up with new ideas. Work together with teammates to keep high efficiency.

• Inidividual morale:
  

  This project proposal is excellent, and I felt confident with our final product.

Dian

• What went well:
  

  Our team meets in a regular basis and everybody shows up on time. Discussions over our project ideas and requirements are innovative and effective. Involving the professor to our discussion is a brillian idea and also a necessity to be successful in the class. Group assignments are done collectively in a nice and organized way. The temptation of a creative project is resisted by our powerful minds; and we will try to enjoy the software engineering process while doing a relatively easier application.

• What I learned this week:
  

  I learned about my teammates, who are all nice and "funny". I learned about the importance of CSE210 is to learn to process of the software engineering rather than the project itself. I roughly learned about how a deliverable project will be done from the beginning to the end, through all the necessary processes (e.g. CICD pipeline).

• What can I do to improve:
  

  I would need to spend more time researching all the technology we will use to make our project since I'm fairly behind in real-world experience comparing to other team members. I should also focus on the purpose of CSE210, which emphasizes on the software engineering process, rather than an interesting yet complicated project.

• Inidividual morale:
  

  I feel confident about my team as I can see the devotion that each team member is willing to donate to our project. I also feel excited to work on some frontend related things (if allowed) as I hated it in the past. I feel lucky to learn all the technology and skills from the best (aka. my teammates) so that I will be more prepared and confident in the job market after graduation.

Edward

• What went well:
  

  Overall, I feel like the team had some nice bonding over the first couple of team meetings. We were able to come together to complete project tasks including outlining what our quarter project is going to be, which technology stack we plan to use for the project, and how we wanted to structure the software engineering process. Progression has been fairly smooth so far without any major hiccups.

• What I learned this week:
  

  The biggest lesson I learned this week is to put more focus on the process rather than the ideation. My tendancies usually lean towards working on interesting projects that I think would be useful in a real world application. On the other hand, the objective of this class is to delineate what "good" software engineering practices and principles should be. In order to focus more on the process, the drawback is that the project might not be as interesting or exciting. In my opinion, there can be much to learn from tackling a harder project with more risk factors and doing a smaller project with less risk factors.

• What can I do to improve:
  

  Some things that I can do to improve: 1. communicating better with my teammates and 2. listening to other teammates. For communicating, we tend to have a hand-wavy approach to assigning tasks and some members of the team would prefer to have more structure. So rather than saying, everyone go research this broad topic, we should break down the tasks into smaller, more tangible tasks. For listening to my teammatse more, I think this is matter of findning our team's culture. Some of us are more talktive than others and it is important to try and loop everyone into the conversation.

• Inidividual morale:
  

  Pretty good so far! I think we're coming along on the right track and other individuals feel like there are still opportunities to grow. I've been learning a lot about different processes from listening to the other teams as well.

Jason

• What went well:
  

  Everyone in the team shows up and we are all actively contributing.

• What I learned this week:
  

  We need to talk with our "customers" to ask for requirements.

• What can I do to improve:
  

  I can work on to be more pro-active on things such as getting in touch with "customers" sooner.

• Inidividual morale:
  

  So far so good!