Assignment 1 And The Next Go 'Round

Assignment 1 is all done, up on the web, and the paper is handed in.

Okay, first of all I need to say that I love each and every member of team Cluster unconditionally. And second of all, I need to say that this assignment was particularly abysmal as far as the balance of work across the team goes. Last quarter, there was a bit of an understanding about certain of the members not contributing or only being able to in very specific ways. I really hope that this quarter doesn't turn out to be that way. That said, I think this assignment had a lot of special circumstances for the group since we had trouble getting everyone up to speed. I'm sure that if we deal with it now it won't be an issue from here on out.

The best way to guarantee that we can work effectively as a team is to have an all-hands meeting at the beginning of the next assignment. We'll be able to get everyone in the same place and set explicit roles for the assignment - since the "so-and-so will pick up your slack" method doesn't seem to be working out so well. Not only will this help with fair distribution of work, it will be much better for the design to get a more open dialog going. I want to have the meeting as soon as the assignment description is out.

Also, I'm beginning to feel a strong need for specific design documentation outside of this blog and the papers we turn in for the assignments. As we nail down more and more details, it's harder to maintain the vision when we're jumping through hoops for the various assignments which only require certain parts (and lower fidelity) to be described. A living document would help us keep track of details and we could just glean what we need for each assignment. However, that is probably WAY beyond the scope of this project.