``The people who succeed in an industrial environment are team-oriented, have leadership attributes, and can express themselves orally and on paper.''
Above quote written by Kenneth Neves in ``Thoughts On CS Candidates For Industrial Positions,'' ACM Computing Surveys, Vol. 28, No. 4es, December 1996.
Since most software and hardware in industry is developed in teams, you need practice in sucessfully functioning on teams; performing in leadership roles; and writing, and presenting technical material.
This strategy combines team work and individual effort; it is effective because it draws on the strengths of both.
"Every successful human endeavor involving collective action requires leadership." [Oakes, page 349] Without leadership, humans tend to drift apart, act alone and lose purpose. Many times this leadership is supplied by an appointed leader or by a leader selected by the team. However, it is important for members of a team to realize that all members should provide leadership, e.g., keep the team focused and productive.
Team name, date, time and place of meeting. List individuals who were
present. Who was absent and why (Was team
informed?). List meeting facilitator, notetaker, timekeeper and any
other roles assigned.
What is the status of assigned activities? What are the major
objectives or plans? Notetaker should summarize the discussion with
focus on final decisions, problems encountered and problems solved.
Discussion of meeting's topics. Assignment of new tasks. Everyone
should participate.
We recommend that the team rotate the roles. Appoint a new
facilitator and notetaker for the next meeting. It is the
responsibility of the facilitator to run the next meeting, making
sure that everyone knows the date, time and place.
The facilitator reminds the team members of the next meeting and
makes sure they attend.
It is the responsibility of the notetaker to type up the Minutes,
distribute them to the team and place a copy in the team's Wiki space.
Decide on next meeting's date, time and place.
Team Meetings And Minutes
Your team should meet at least once a week. When the team meets, an
individual will be assigned the task of notetaker
or scribe. The notetaker takes Minutes which includes the following sections:
Communication
Effective communication between your team members as well as with
your Customer and Instructor is a must. Formal
communication lines, e.g., minutes of meetings, memoranda,
reports and Wiki
are important. However, be aware that informal communication
lines, e.g., email between team members, are
important too and fostering them is the responsibility of the
team.
To foster communication, each team will be issued an account and Wiki space.
Configuration management is especially important for computer programs since they are so fluid. In the case of programs, a configuration management tool such as the Subversion can also be used as part of a disaster plan. For example, late one night one of the members of the team accidently does irrepairable damage on a large program file. With Subversion, the team can easily retrieve a previous version of the file.
You are required to use a configuration management system! We suggest you use Subversion for your programs. We have added it as a plug-in to Eclipse.