Computer Science Capstone Design

Task: Set Team and Mentor Meetings

Overview

Teams often make the mistake of saying "hey, let's not set any meetings...let's just sort of meet whenever we feel that we need to". This is nearly always a huge mistake. Meetings are not just there to exchange vitally needed information (although that's certainly one function), they also serve as a strong mechanism for team cohesion, collaboration and trust-maintenance. They are generally based around short individual status updates that each member's progress...or lack thereof..evident to all team members, and may then go on to discuss various current project issues. Without these regular check-ins where you have to report what you've been working on and how far along (e.g. % complete) you are on your assigned tasks, it's just too easy to let things slip. It's also an excellent time to do a review/repair on your current task distribution: in the course of status updates, it may become apparent that some tasks turned out to be easier/faster than others, and new resources (people power) can be (re)allocated to make sure all tasks move ahead as planned.

The meetings with your CS faculty mentor serve the same function, at the next level up: they give a chance to report of team progress over the last week: tasks completed, tasks currently in progress, and upcoming tasks that the team is aware of. It's also an excellent chance to discuss design questions or challenges the team is up against, or questions regarding tasks distribution or other project management issues that the team could use some input on.

The Assignment

This task is very simple, consisting of two quick parts:

1. Develop a "team communication strategy" for your team for the CS486 semester.
   • At least one weekly, in-person team meeting is required!
   • Teams will want to firmly schedule at least once a week, while also putting in place mechanisms for scheduling additional "touch base" and/or "on-demand" meetings as needed. Time is limited this term. If you hit an impasse, you can't afford to wait till the next meeting; call an emergency meeting and keep moving!
   • Also detail what other communication strategies/tools will be used to stay in touch. Slack group? Email? SMS?
   • What are the expectations for lead time on calling impromtu meetings? What are the expectations for response time to Slack/email/SMS or other communications? Be specific and clear; your aim is to make sure everyone is on the same page here, and no one can say "I didn't know".
   • The more clear you are about what communication expectations are up front, the more likely that your team will develop a strong communication habit early as we ramp up implementation.
   • Your communications strategy should therefore consist of the mandatory weekly meeting time, plus a clear description of additional communication channels and expectations.
2. Set a fixed weekly mentor meeting.
   • Negotiate a weekly meeting time with your mentor.
   • Negotiate what your mentor will expect from you each week. Generally this includes some form of concrete "task report", detailing: tasks completed since last meeting, tasks the team is currently working on (including individual assignments with percentages), and tasks you see coming onto your horizon soon. Plus an up-to-date Gantt chart showing your progress, and commit statistics from your teams Bitbucket/Github repo.

What to turn in

1. Summarize your outcomes in a professionally-formatted one-page "communications strategy" memo to your team mentor.
2. Save your document as a PDF for archiving on your team website, for easy reference by all members.
3. Present a hardcopy of your document to your mentor for grading.