So here we are, at the end of the journey of the module that taught us "team-work" and "communication". It was a nice journey that took us through many ups and downs, success and failures and of course, a learning path for our future endeavors.

We worked in teams to produce a project for the module CG1102, applying the principles from this module. My team consisted of Junius and Rayner for CG1102 and Kevin, Khoa and Jing Mei for CG1413 problem solving approach. I acknowledge their efforts in the team and hope to work with them again. It was a semester full of high team activity, sunday meetings and a lot of collective hard-work to achieve the goals.

The module CG1413 really taught some important points that we applied in all the team work assignments and will also apply later on. I would like to list the major learning outcomes here -

1) Conflict Resolution

2) Being an effective team member (or a leader)

3) Understanding Verbal and Non-Verbal cues

4) Effective writing skills through blogs

I really appreciate all the above values taught in this module as they would surely be handy in all my other team-work modules and also in my future job which would require team-work. Understanding the person is the first step to work with the person.

For my CG1102 assignments I would say something regarding team-work which I had also mentioned in my Oral Defence report : For programmers to work in teams, we need to know how to use the basic software that allows team-work - the Version Control System. Since each person is programming on different features, it becomes difficult to keep track of the code in a team.

This is the only flaw that I found in the 1102 assignments. It would have been helpful if we were taught how to set up and use SVN. (Sorry for the technical term here, but the concept is understandable :P)

Again, it was good to work with people from different cultural backgrounds and even different speaking accents. No other course would have taught us this.

I was the team leader for my CG1102 programming team and it helped me gain insights on how to manage a programming team and how to allocate work based on the assignment. Going into long discussions with Junius was interesting :)

In the end here I would say that I have learnt a lot in both the modules. I am quite happy to have passed QET exam to take the CG1413 module this semester. Computer Engineering is the most innovative courses in NUS and the approach is organised well. No other discipline allows such exposure. I am proud of being a part of the course.

This was perhaps the best Oral Presentation I have ever given, in terms of both the audience, and the topic. I would surely like to mention here that my performance was much better (not the best) than the Oral Presentation 1. I can attribute a reason to that - simply, the topic of Oral Presentation 2 surely interested me. It was one of the topics that I have been exploring a lot since the start of this semester.

As I see myself in the video of the presentation, I find that there is scope of improvement in the areas of - eye contact, better expressions and perhaps a bit slower pace. But, personally I am quite happy with the way I improved from OP1.

The presentation had good content and I feel , the video on Cloud Computing was a good option to tell the audience about Cloud Computing. Since Cloud Computing is a complex topic, getting the idea across to the audience by explaining with slides would have been difficult. Given the short time, the video quickly covered all the points of Cloud Computing and also aroused interest among the audience.

The main objective for which we had set out – Implementing Cloud Computing in NUS, I think was achieved – not in the practical sense, but in a sense that we were able to get the idea across to the concerned authorities. The idea that I have (and which I came across quite late in the research for this problem) is the shift of NUS email from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps. It was just that we could not put that up in the slides, but I did demonstrate it during the Q&A session. Regarding this issue, I will definitely follow up with the concerned authorities in NUS.

Other issues such as team dynamics – they were simply awesome for this Oral Presentation. The flow of the presentation was good and everybody took full interest in the topic. There were some instances when the technical stuff touched higher levels and we were a bit lost. That was perhaps the only problem we faced. Otherwise, everybody was quite relaxed and confident during the presentation.

I look forward to more research and team work efforts like this in the future CEG modules.

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Here are some of the links that you might be interested in -

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/switch_exchange.html

https://tools.google.com/dlpage/exchangemigration

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/switch_exchange_resources.html#benefits

http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-google-apps-still-a-tiny-business-only-50-million-a-year-but-microsoft-should-be-in-major-panic-mode-2010-3?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+businessinsider+%28Business+Insider%29

I have a team for CG1102 comprising of Rayner and Junius. We met on 11th February at 11am at COM1 Level 2. The meeting was mainly to discuss the design for the assignment and the required coding part. We sat in a tutorial room to do our video recording which can be found here on Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHKk3PdwtAM

The meeting was really fun for the 3 of us, because we all bond well and can understand each other. We formed the basic structure of the lab assignment and then sat down to code. With my previous experience in coding in a team, I realised it is quite helpful if the programmers sit together and code on a single machine. One guy can just keep typing the program and the logic runs in everybody's head. So there are immediate suggestions and immediate implementations of all the good ideas from 3 brains. And moreover ideas are also thrashed if they are not good. This not only results in team bonding, but an awesome code.

Though this method of coding together works good in our team, it definitely will not work for bigger programs and bigger codes, as people might need to divide the work and then do it. Our meeting turned out to be a success as we could build the basic structure of the idea and also look up (google) many stuff that we were unsure of.

On seeing the video, I think it was really good that we all worked together and listened to each other's ideas and then implemented them collaboratively.

Apart from that, I also have a few comments regarding the CG1413 meeting. We usually meet online and discuss stuff on a collaborative tool - etherpad.com
Etherpad is a collaborative notepad with built in mulit-user chat. It is damn easy to use and is real-time (updates other people's copy character-by-character). We are taking full benefit of collaborative research. And I would like to suggest each and everybody working in a team to use such products. Even Google Wave is good and I use it for my other module teams, but it is a bit laggy. Etherpad is simply awesome.

Resolving Interpersonal Conflict has been a major challenge that every human (who interacts with people :P) has gone through.

Talking about some conflict that I have faced before (yes! I am a human!), there is one that I would like to share. Before I move on to explaining the conflict, I think I can firstly talk about the reason why such a situation arose. I can attribute it to my short-temper and then the ego of the other side (here, my close friend). Another thing that I feel is that working in a team with really close friends is another explorable problem, as the team-bonding includes the element of closeness and some times "taking-for-granted" feeling.

Hersh, a close friend of mine since class 7th, was working on a project with me for a Science Exhibition. We had decided to make a working prototype model of an energy efficient home. Leaving the details of the project apart, we had several meetings for the project and the design. He took the task of designing the project model and I was to work on the features and functions part of the project.

Since it was just the 2 of us, we decided the stuff together and it was not that one person was only responsible for his task. It was a mutual understanding that he helped in the areas I was doing, and vice-versa. In a meeting we had decided upon a particular design. I thought it was the best that we could come up with. But after spending so much time on the design together, Hersh did some changes to it, which I felt were un-necessary and which undermined our original efforts. He just brought the changes and showed them to me. Finding that it was not the original design, I lost my temper as we had really spent hours over the original design. I kind-of angrily said that he had done the wrong thing.

This was enough to trigger a conflict. He took a defensive stand, which soon turned into his stubbornness to change back the design. The conflict became even more complicated when the features could not fit exactly into the new design and he asked me to change the features accordingly.

So for this conflict I attribute ego and stubbornness on both sides and I believe if we hadnt been close friends as a team this condition wouldnt have come up as we would not take each other for granted. Ultimately, a compromise situation was reached and the project was submitted, though, without some features.

I think the only big moral I can see from this conflict is that - "Do not form team with your friends, but, make friends in your teams."

I will add a link here : this might help me later in finding a solution to this problem
http://www.teambuildinginc.com/tps/031b7.htm

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Let me add in one more thing here: However this post may undermine me as a short-tempered person, I am not. People change, yes, they do :P

Before beginning on anything, the 2 heavy words above need a definition :
(In context of a team)

Intercultural Communication : I am an Indian. My team-mates are Singaporeans. So "Intercultural" Communication would be the effective communication across cultural boundaries. (Wikipedia Defines it as "process of exchanging meaningful and unambiguous information across cultural boundaries, in a way that preserves mutual respect and minimises antagonism.")

A slide show about Inter Cultural Communication

Inter Cultural Communication by Madam. Marinita Schumacher

Interpersonal Communication : It can be defined as communication among people who are dependent on one another or share a common history. As a team, the team mates will observe Interpersonal Communication.

Talking about my team for CG1413 (C04A), I have two brilliant people Rayner and Junius. They actively take part in team discussions during tutorials. I feel that interpersonal communication can only be achieved to the best level if team mates are good friends. We aim to share a good rapport and work effectively in all our assignments.
We are actually the smallest team in our C04 group (and the one without a girl), but I guess that should not be a problem as we 3 can specialize in the tasks that are needed for the projects and deliver a combined effort product.

I think if we all have a mutual understanding, conflicts don't stand a chance. And a good understanding can only be achieved through working together. In my other teams for another module, there is a common notion that "Shared Suffering induces Bonding". Working long hours towards a same goal automatically induces bonding.
At first, I noticed, we all were a bit shy and reserved while talking to each other. A bit of Cultural differences can be attributed to that, but now we have an Intercultural communication level and we now know each other well and even understand the non-verbal cues.

For good communication in a team - planning for meetings is of obvious importance. Meetings should be set with the consent of all team members and having an agenda is of utmost importance.

Thus with a project for CG1102, I believe we will be able to actually live through all the phases of communication. Looking forward to a great team-work and high spirits.

Perhaps the above 4 words are the most important words of my 2nd Semester at NUS: "Effective Communication and Teamwork". Communication skills hold a lot of importance for me. Defining it -

Effective
- Communication is about getting and receiving thoughts with little or no distortion.
- Team Work is about believing in the team, and advancing aggressively towards a common objective.

I am a person who keeps bubbling with ideas, and getting my ideas across with minimal amount of distortion, means Effective Communication to me. Effective Team Work, a quality that I still feel that I have to nurture and develop, holds real importance as my future jobs will require me to work in teams.

Instead of going deep into the details of communication and teamwork, I will just use this space to talk about why I would like to be an effective communicator, and why I want to be the best team-worker. I dont want to talk about "what" is communication and teamwork. It is actually just a "Good-habit" and "Great qualities" that I want to imbibe over the 4 months of this module.

The best learner is the one who learns from his previous mistakes and experiences by reflecting on his thoughts. To give me an incentive to be the better person I want to be, I will rather confess and actively realize some of the mistakes that I might have committed.

I dont think that I am a really good communicator of my thoughts.
The main reasons I can attribute to this is that perhaps I think a lot and dont like being involved in lots of conversations that involve others' points of view. (This doesnt mean that I dont talk. Give me a topic of my interest, and I can put my whole mind in front of you!)
But the key thing is communicating effectively. The thing I really dislike about others is the way they attach a point of view to every single existence on earth, and then propagate that point to everybody. Perhaps this is one of the barrier of communication that I have. I have a point of view, but I keep it to myself, and thus miss being part of important conversations.
Communication not only involves points of view, but also ideas and thoughts. My work later on will require me to communicate my ideas effectively, and I think that this quality can be nurtured heavily.

Coming to team work, I have worked in a team before and I am working now too. I have teams for almost all my modules. I think the best part of being in a team is that you really come to know of your short-comings and believing in others. You learn the art of motivating others and also staying motivated towards the same goal.
My experience in working in teams has been good so far, but I still feel that I do lack a bit in "Putting in my best".

This is all I have to say about being an effective communicator and team-member. The blog is about reflecting on myself, so I dont expect to write much about "What" the things are, but "why" the things are. Learning the "What" part is eventually the main aim of this module, but getting a window to write something that perhaps might improve me, is rare :P

Pointing out strengths does not require strength, but pointing out weaknesses in one-self does require strength. Also what good a learning is if it just strengthens your strengths, and talks nothing about your weaknesses. I dont say here that my communication and team work skills are really down-under, but yeah, there is always a scope for improvement :)

Just trying out the theme :)

Blog Entry coming soon...

I am doing 3 blogs this semester (links at top), so might as well try something new. Facebook theme looks cool, but a bit is a bit troublesome with adding gadgets. Will figure it out soon.