Live Sessions

" At any given moment every group has a particular participation pattern. For instance, it may be all one-way, with the leader talking to the members; or it maybe two-way, with the leader speaking to the members and the members responding; or it may be multidirectional, with all members speaking to one another and to the group as a whole... The studies do not indicate that any one given participation pattern is always best; it depends upon the requirements of a given situation. But many studies show that on the whole, the broader the participation among the members of a group the deeper the interest and involvement will be" - David Jaques, Learning in Groups

Small trivial questions that come up during group projects have the ability to set the project off course. In effort to address these questions quickly, a solution that the GSN Team has implemented is having live coding sessions. While these sessions were originally implemented to take care of smaller questions, there are other benefits that also came out of them.

Not only is the team able to get answers and solutions for these smaller questions, but the amount of time that we spent waiting for a response is rapidly reduced. Previously when we had an issue, we would either email, or attempt to call others in the group in effort to get to a solution. However the delay in response sometimes went from bad to worse very quickly, with some questions being on hold for hours, or days. 

The overall sessions don't last for more than 3 hours, however the output of work that we completed in the time, had put us ahead for the rest of the week. In scrum terms, our teams velocity was increasing due to the meetings this meant that we can spend more time refining what we have completed in effort to get the product closer to what the client requires. 

The last benefit of working in these live sessions is that it allows us to gauge the strengths of our teammates, and leverage those strengths, while still working on the areas of improvement. This learning aspect of the session is very useful, and allows the team to grow at a much quicker pace. However it also alleviates any issues where one individual is doing the majority of the work for the project, the tasks can be divided in real time, and any objections can be addressed right away. 

Reference:

Jaques, D. (2000). Learning in Groups: A HandBook for Improving Group Work. Retrieved October 28, 2015, from https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=EbWA1qSGQ20C&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=group work&ots=nI-9pDz9ZR&sig=d_9aYatgzqlSR8pkmbx_ilAmFrE#v=onepage&q=group work&f=true
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Learning Lab. (n.d.). Retrieved October 28, 2015, from https://emedia.rmit.edu.au/learninglab/content/groupwork-tutorial

identifying clear objectives.

When first meeting the client it can be difficult to understand what it is that they exactly require from the project, and while the "user stories" offer a good way to get a grasp of how it looks like from the outside. As the product develops, its important to be able to see if the goals are being objectively met, and how the dynamic of introducing new goals into the project, will change the outcome of the product. A very effective way to establish these goals is through asking open ended questions to ensure the client is able to speak their mind about a subject. Qualitative Social Research has established that,"Furthermore, the information gathered thereby and especially in combination with open-ended questions can facilitate starting a conversation" In reference to interviewing individuals to extract more information in regards to subjects that they have spoken about.

Which bring up a very good point, which is starting a conversation around what are the direct implications of the subjective goals that are brought up. Without doing this one will run into the issue of fragmented ideas that come up in the production of the finalized product. 
An example would be that our client, wanted us to create a site that was cleaner, and had more organized content. However after running into unexpected issues in regards to accessing source code, we had essential started to rebuild the site from ground-up in order to achieve a viable product to show the client. Now going back to the original goal, of making the website more clean and organized, has the mark been hit? Does it still need further optimization? To attempt to see if the project has taken the correct direction in course, it often has to be directly asked to the client, "Hey in what ways can this be improved?" Often times when asking this question the client can point something out that was previously missed, and can be added to the product backlog. This act of working, then getting feedback from the client allows for a more refined, and personal project for the client.
Asking these types of questions will not only lead to an easier understanding of what is to be done with the project, it also ensures that the direction of the sprints are headed toward that goal. By not asking these types of questions, it only creates more work toward the end of the project when things need to get ironed out. Check to see if the question asked to the client hits one of the points in the chart below, if it does thats a good direction to start gathering more information.

Reference:
Open Ended Questions. (n.d.). Retrieved October 12, 2015, from http://www.creducation.org/resources/triad_meeting/threegameboard_r.png


Witzel, A. (n.d.). The Problem-centered Interview | Witzel | Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research. Retrieved October 11, 2015, from http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1132/2522