Reflection on Meeting 1

My group, C05B, held our first meeting on Thursday, 3pm and PGP Project Room. We had chosen to meet on this day as it was the day we were all free for most of the day. It is to ensure we had ample time to prepare for the discussion and so we could have a more fruitful session in the afternoon.

We met together on Wednesday's lab session to get a rough idea on what we were supposed to accomplish during the meeting. We exchanged some pointers on how best to design the program and then went back to think of our separate solutions.

During the filming the next day, it took me some getting used to having a camera pointing in my direction as I gave my suggestions. I believe my team mates also felt uncomfortable at first, but as we went further into the discussion we forgot about the presence of the camera and would lose any shyness involved in the contribution ideas.

As this is a rather long lab, there were many ways to design the program. In this case, we each had a different way of writing out the interface class. The next difficult part was deciding whose design was the best to implement. We started with consolidating the classes which we would use, followed by the required functions. There were some disagreement as to whether we should keep the program short, hence increasing the complexity, or making it detailed and easier to understand, thus reducing the number of problems which might arise from misused commands. However, after much explanation and justification, we decided to go for a slightly more detailed version to help in debugging processes in the future.

We followed the agenda quite closely, ending the meeting in 50 mins. At the end of it all, we decided to meet again the next day to start the coding process, as Michael was going overseas for the mid term break, while Anuj and I had other obligations to fulfill during the week. We also sneaked in a short mention of the report which was due on Sunday, and agreed that we should at least draw up the outline of the codes before we begin the more precise areas of the assignment.

Overall, it was an enjoyable session and we all benefited greatly. This is the first time we were working together to write a single program, and we had quite significant differences in our coding practices. This variety has allowed us the pleasure of choice and of learning about newer and perhaps better ways to do our coding. It is indeed a great learning experience.

Resolving Interpersonal Conflicts

The following example is based on a strategy game.

A is the founder of a particular team within the stages of gameplay. He has painstakingly recruited a number of singaporean players to join this team in the game, which caters to international play. As founder, he chooses a small number of players to help him run his team.

Before long, A has other real life issues to attend to, and so cannot actively manage the group. The rest of the management team continue to work. However, A retains his position as the founder and requests regular updates on the situation (We all know how addictive online games can be). A has not been playing with the group for a few weeks, but continues to pressure the leadership in giving him regular reports. Unable to cope with his lack of participation and demanding requests, the group, represented by member B, confronts him.

A argues that he was the one who formed the team, hence retaining the right to know all internal workings. B criticises A for being too dictating, and A immediately threatens to delete all the game accounts of the group. Both sides turn sour, A refuses to listens anymore, leaves the group and ends all communication.

You are a mutual friend of both A and B, and you understand how important this game is to both parties, hence why they're so uptight about this. They have both been friends with each other for a long time, and you wish to help them get back on speaking terms. How would you approach this problem?