Module M
On November 10, JoAnn attends the Team Leaders meeting:
Minutes of Nov. 10 Team Leaders meeting
She gives copies of the CS team's requirements documentation to the other team leaders and asks them for feedback. She also reports on the recent team assignments.
Risk Document
JoAnn reports that she's begun structural deconstruction of the code (breaking out the if statements and function calls, etc)
On Nov. 11, Joann sends the following email:
Dear Ken and Bob: I'm quite concerned that it's the end of eleventh week and we sort of started over with our project, see risk number 6, which totally came true in my mind. Anyway, worry warts will be worry warts. We have three working weeks left with lots of other course demands on our time, let's hammer out a schedule to get this done, or a backup plan. What do you say? Ken, I've started deconstructing the existing code and feel both angry and entertained by seeing so clearly which person wrote which parts by their coding styles. I've never had to read through a big code of other people's before. Attached are minutes from leader's yesterday and risk doc. I gave our requirements to the leaders and faculty. -JoAnn p.s. see you at one, or call me, I'm working at home a lot today and tomorrow cooking for the benefit at the art gallery tomorrow night.
Then, on Nov. 11, another email:
Subject: check out the assignment! Dear all: Just received this email from Hank. am pasting here. SHOULD we prepare something? JoAnn ----------- Howdy, The preliminary design review with my sponsors (NSWC and Craft Engineering) will be Thursday 11/18 from 1-3. We may not need the entire 2 hours, but, we'll have the room in case it's needed. The meeting will be in 208. From 1-2 all the students can attend. Whoever needs to leave at 2:00 can do so, however, it is important that at least 1 person from each of the two groups attend for the duration. At a minimum, the crane and motion platform team leaders need to give a 4-5 slide presentation that capture two primary things. 1. the requirements you are designing to 2. your preliminary design Stating the requirements is fairly easy - e.g. 1 slide with bullets. No introduction to the problem is needed since both these guys know as much as can be known about it. The difficult part is effectively communicating your design. One approach is to start with a high level description of the design, then focus with more detail on some of the subcomponents. Plots, figures, equations—all good stuff. If you take this approach it is critical that you have a slide that shows the outline of your talks. That way the audience knows that you are starting high and progressing to low levels. Otherwise you will get bogged down in questions before presenting the entire design. At the end you should show where you are on your project plan and discuss the future for a minute. The motion platform folks should have at least one slide showing your scaling approach for the geometry and the pendulum. For heaven's sake, show an equation or two. It's very likely that both sponsors will have lots of questions/suggestions. One thing to keep in mind—Don't Get Defensive. They want to help you learn + they want to see a nice product for both them and you. On the other hand... feel free to defend your design, just keep an open mind. This is the time to make changes if they will help. It's much better to change a few things now, as opposed to finding out that you need to change something after 5 or 6 components have been machined. Please send me and Prof. Smith a copy of your slides by Tues 4:30pm.
- Respond to JoAnn's concern about it being 11th week.
- JoAnn mentions "Risk #6" in her email.
- Take a look at Risk #6 in the risk document. Do you agree with JoAnn's assessment?
- Evaluate progress so far.
- What has the team learned?
- What can they give to Hank and the sponsors, given the time constraints?
- Outline a strategy for the remaining few weeks.
This module begins with JoAnn expressing concern about their project:
- Is this appropriate to share with the team?
- Is there a different way to do it?
- What effect does calling herself a "worry wart" have on the strength of her message?
- How often should she be asking for confirmation of her decisions?
The summary of the team leader meeting corrects the assignment of duties. Should she have done this earlier - last week? - more formally, in an email?
She seems to be deconstructing code on her own. Where is Ken?
Bob should be working on Matlab/Simulink: Will he?
The presentation to the Sponsors can be taught as a "real world" end-of-project requirement. It might also be good to compare/contrast to other presentations students might be doing in their classes. Genre of CS vs ME vs Humanities?
Also opens door to discussing how to:
- Organize presentations
- Establish appropriate "tone" in professional documents
- How to divide tasks/responsibilities
- JoAnn seems to be doing a mini-lecture to teammates on organizing their presentations and responding to questions. This might be useful to as guidelines and discussion of method.
- JoAnn continues to take on too much responsibility-both management and workload generally-so is it any surprise she sounds slightly hysterical?
- JoAnn contiues to undercut her authority with the "worry wart" comment. Could return to discussion of power/authority/responsibility
Some questions that came up:
- Was crane team told about presentation earlier? That is, can it be found on timelines?
- How would you deal with this (again, BS or give Boss the truth?)
- Any similar experiences among students?