CS3216: Varsity Dynamics

(Hey, I thought I would do/learn more programming, why am I writing so much stuff sia.. =p)

(Half written)

Firstly, I would like to give some background on team dynamics. I found the principles illustrated in this book quite useful - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Dysfunctions_of_a_Team.

• Absence of Trust,
• Fear of Conflict,
• Lack of Commitment,
• Avoidance of Accountability, and
• Inattention to Results.

I find avoidance of conflict especially relevant for Asian cultures. Small problems and miscommunications tend to remain hidden because no one wants to voice them out until it becomes too big to ignore.

Okie, so the next step would be to try to detect these symptoms. I suggest a free and simple method for startups is to create a survey using google forms and ask 10 simple questions to every team member about these 5 symptoms.

1st part:

1. What are the pros and cons of working with people you are already acquainted with for work/project?

2. List out the important traits that you would look for in a team member. Share and compare them

with your team mates. How similar or different are they?

3. The members of VC considered their team “ideal”. However, what are some of the problems

that you can foresee?

4. Is it better to work with talented people or people you like?

Thoughts

1.

Pros

You save the time getting to know them superficially. When you have disagreements, you can still work it out as you are all friends.

Cons

It might be more difficult to give feedback objectively about work without hurting any feelings.

Friends might show different sides of themselves when under work pressure.

It depends on how long you've known each other, and whether you've worked with each other before. Generally though, it's probably better to work with people you know, because there's peer pressure to not let your friends down.

2.

I try to find teammates who score highly on the Passion, Character, Intelligence test.

Passion - They need to be passionate about the project.

Character - I think it's important to work with people who have good character and who are willing to work for the good of the team. This also covers their work attitude.

Intelligence - I think it's so important to work with intelligent people. Intelligent people are different from smart people. To me, intelligent means being smart appropriately without being a smart aleck. Intelligent people are willing to say that they made a mistake or they are unsure of something.

3. Not enough balance in terms of the technical background required. (Easy in retrospect)

4. Err.. It would be good to work with the people whom you respect.

2nd part

1. VC started out with an ambitious design, aiming to make many changes to many Facebook

game conventions (i.e. combat system, story as a reward, semi-exploratory quest design).

Would you have recommended them to pick a simpler design or would you have encouraged

them to go along with it?

2. How different would the situation have been if there was another strong programmer within the

team (a 5th member)?

3. How would you decide on how much to do given the composition of your project team?

Thoughts

1. I think they made a big mistake in taking on too much work that requires a lot of effort and time. Content production is very difficult to automate. I wonder whether they could have tried to let users generate their own stories/content.
2. Depends on whether the work roles are clearly defined. The other programmer needs to have strong execution skills that's necessary. Given that they kept switching the language, I'm not sure whether the 5th programmer can keep up.
3. Make everyone do a time budget.
List down the features and cut half of them, double the time estimation, work consistently.

3rd part

1. How different was the environment for working on the project during the school term as compared

to the vacations?

2. What were the main reasons for VC’s failure during the vacation? What would you have done

differently to prevent it?

3. Discuss with your team members, some of the lessons in this case study that can be applied to

your Final Project.

Thoughts

1. No deadline pressure
2.
3.

(Once again, I think Prof Ben is extremely prescient in forcing everyone to study team dynamics. This might be the breaking factor between a superstar team and a team of "average" people willing to work for the good of the team.)