2 Team building and planning

Every project is a chance to network.

As a student, you have the opportunity to network with future Software Engineers! Many of your teammates may pursue careers at different companies which gives you a nice network of colleagues to discuss your different career paths over time. While many of you may not have jobs yet, you are all working toward similar goals to advance in the tech industry. You should take advantage of the opportunity to form relationships with each other and to stay in touch for many years to come. Your team project is the perfect opportunity to impress each other with displays of motivation and good work ethic. Take the opportunity to always do more than is asked of you by your team members so that your project is successful and you initiate a good reputation as a Software Engineer.

1. Identify clear roles for team members

Your team project involves many different tasks such as project management requirements elicitation and documentation, design tasks, coding, testing, documentation, and systems administration. Identify the roles and lead team members for each role. You may consider two team members for each lead role since the course is a learning experience. You should also consider that there are unfortunate situations where students withdraw from a course.

2. Identify ways to stand out

There are thousands of students that graduate with Computer Science degrees each year. Many of these students have excellent GPAs. You should find ways to stand out from the crowd. This may include developing projects in your free time. It may also include examples of your work with stories about how you exceeded the expectations for your team and the course.

Example ways to stand out include:

• Stand out as an excellent project management lead that is organized and makes it easy for team members to contribute and understand their specific tasks. At the same time, be flexible if team members need to adjust their tasks when they realize that some tasks are more involved than initially thought.
• Create a nice design that makes it easy for team members to contribute and then serve as a resource where team members are able to comfortable ask for help.
• Take the lead on the configuration management tool by setting up accounts for your team members and giving a tutorial to help them to understand how to use it.
• Take the lead on the database design and provide team members with a tutorial that teaches them to interact with the database.
• Take the lead on testing from the beginning and set up a nice testing infrastructure for your team.
• Take the lead on the user interface design and create a user interface that exceeds the expectations for the course, showing off your abilities as a user design expert and/or artist.

In addition to the ideas above, list ideas of ways that each team member may use their personal backgrounds and interests to stand out from the crowd when they interview for jobs in the future.

3. Set personal goals

While we have focused on team member goals thus far, each individual team member should also set personal goals. These goals should focus on gaining the most experience possible from the course in order to help advance them as far as possible in their goals of becoming a strong Software Engineer.

Complete the following table as an individual to summarize the expertise that you will build or improve this semester. For instance, if an employer asks about your experience with unit testing, you may want to describe a test plan that you created and experience with a tool such as Junit. Similarly, for each topic below, list experiences that you want to have at the end of the semester and that will help you with upcoming job interviews.

4. Team building exercises

Now that your team is in place, get to know each other. Your instructor may have a few team building exercises to help you to bond. In addition, consider the following exercises that you may use outside of the classroom.

• Dream jobs:

• What is your dream job? If you do not have a dream job, what is an example of at least one job that you would enjoy?

• What steps have you taken to make progress toward this dream job?

• How could we help you as a team member to make progress toward this dream job?

• Build a tower
  • Round1: Work together against other teams in the class to build the tallest tower out of limited supplies that include one piece of 8.5”x11” paper, one paper clip, and 6” of tape.
  • Round 2: Modify the structure such that it is the tallest structure that withstands the force of a hair dryer blowing on it on a low setting from 6” away.
  • Round 3: Modify the structure such that it is the tallest structure that withstands the force of a hair dryer blowing on it on a high setting from 6” away.