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IS480 Team wiki: 2011T2 IMATEAM Teamreflections

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Our Thoughts.
"Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action."




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Reflections

Team

Team
   

Together as a team of four, we’ve learnt so much on this incredible journey, and we’re only a little past the midway mark. Aside from the technical aspects that we’ve gathered, we’ve also learnt the following:

• Teamwork and communication – Being a small group has its pros and cons. One of its pros however, is that we’ve grown closer, and learnt to depend on one another and improve on our communication in the process. One of the initial challenges was that we were not communicating enough, which led to delays since some aspects of the development required the completion and coordination of another team member.

• Scope Manageability – As a team, we were full of ideas and brimming with confidence about our project. However, we also learnt to manage both our client and supervisor’s expectations, and how to be selective and realistic about additions or changes to the scope of the project. Nevertheless, the biggest learning point has been how as a team, we’ve learnt to consistently adapt our own expectations and goals to the various additions and changes to our project scope.

• Finding the middle ground – Even though we’re a small of team of four, each of us has incredibly strong opinions and capable personalities, which would ultimately more often than not lead to disagreements. However, a good thing is that we’re comfortable with each other and as a group, and disagreements instead led to even better ideas when we all ultimately try to find a middle ground.

Iskandar

Iskandar
   

This FYP has been an incredibly long, hard journey but one that I thoroughly feel proud and elated to be a part of. I’m sure every one of us in IMATEAM has learnt so much beyond our wildest dreams, but the best part for me has been to have gone through it with this team. I’ve learnt so much in terms of project management, both in terms of project scheduling and managing the team. Despite this only being the mid-point reflection, I’ve developed a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for my team-members and the amazing things they’ve been able to do for this project.

Learning Drupal is so very hard, but very rewarding in my opinion. Our team took a leap of faith with Drupal because of its potential in offering robustness and awesome websites, but also the potential opportunities it provides us in the team as individuals. After all, there is an incredibly huge demand for Drupal developers, but few in supply.

Felix

Felix
   

I have learnt a lot so far for this FYP. When we first decided to choose Drupal as our main framework, we did not realize that the learning curve for this particular technology is very high. Initially, my team and I were concerned that we would not be able to deliver best product to our sponsors. But we, as a team, worked together and helped one another. Subsequently, I learned that with hard work (and enjoyed the fun time I spent with my groupmates) and having full confidence in my groupmates’ abilities, we are able to face the challenges and resolve any problems we encountered along the way.

As a lead developer, I have acquired some knowledge of the Drupal modules. One of the major difficulties that I came across during the development process was not knowing how to start to custom code the 3rd party modules. First, I had to understand and be familiar with the codes of these modules so I know which part to modify to fit our project’s requirement. Some of the codes were very complex that it took me hours to just grasp what the codes are about. The other difficulty that I encountered was modifying the codes. In order to accomplish the task, I had to change the codes from a few files within the module.

Alicia

Alicia
   

The FYP journey has been a challenging but fruitful one for me so far. I have learned a lot throughout the duration of the project, both on the business and IT side of things. I assume the role of Business Analyst in the team, thus it is my responsibility to be in constant communication with our sponsors and supervisor. As our team is a small one, it is especially important that we manage client's expectations well to ensure that our scope is manageable. It is also important that we all take on more than one role and help each other out whhenever we can to ensure that the workload is evenly distributed. As a B.A., I also helped out with the technical side by developing the admin functions of our application.

This project has taught me to be patient and resilient. As we are tackling Drupal 7, a new framework that none of us had prior experience with, it was important that we got our foundations right. It was also crucial that we found the determination to try again whenever a function did not work as planned. A lot of effort had to put into research but they paid off in the end. Working on both the business side and technical side of things also taught me more about the importance of reconciling the needs and differences of these two aspects.

Stephenie

Stephenie
   

So far, this FYP journey has been a mixture of pain and happiness. To begin with, we are a really small team. Being a small team has its pros and cons. It’s really easier to communicate within a small team; we have no time to hold grudges with one another. We voice out our opinions and discuss everything as a team cause we know that we need everybody support in doing the project. Honestly, I am really happy to be in this team. Although we are really close friends and know each other strengths and weaknesses inside out, we are not afraid to step out of our comfort zone and volunteer to help one another. It’s really important to have a good, hardworking team that understand and support one another especially when we are working on a totally new language, which has a really steep learning curve, and have to manage client expectations at the same time.

As a lead designer, I am really stress at times because I am afraid that I am unable to meet clients or my team members’ expectations. Besides, designing in Drupal is not as easy as designing in Photoshop. It’s so much more challenging. The video tutorials I’ve watched for the past 2 months way surpassed the total number of tutorials I’ve watched in my poly and university years. And I really thank God for those nice people who posted up those video tutorials! As tired and stressful it may be, I still feel accomplished after I am able to improve on the design week after week!