Delivery 2 Onward

New policies need to be addressed for uniform contribution. I propose two rules and two guidelines (open for discussion, obviously) to be laid done to attempt to normalize contributions.

Rules:

• Participation on the forums is mandatory. This allows asynchronous, consistent communication among us.
  
• Initiative is expected. This is for your own benefit, and ours as a group.
  

Guidelines:

• Collaboration on a single line item is a good thing, and allows quality assurance to some extent.
  
• As an extension, contributions deserve discussion--both through criticism and merits.
  

Moving on; the forums now allow users to post images and other files. The current limit is 20Mb total, 10Mb per file, but the total can be increased to 500Mb through a nominal fee I can cover. Be considerate what you post. If it is a particularly large file, consider using a service like dropbox, or google drive.

Also from here on out, there will be a thread discussing what each group member will be taking on for line items. Line items can be worked on collaboratively, or concurrently among different group members. However, if an item is being worked on by more than, say, 3 people, a different item should considered.

As always, please discuss.

Sounds good to me. So are we just going to base all our work out of this forum? If so that's fine.

I also think that we should post a contact page or something like that so we can get a hold of each other if needed so we don't have to wait for someone to check the forum. let me know what you think.


Its fine to do all the work form the forum, but we need to meet up at least once or twice before we go ahead and turn in the progress report.

Also, I do not feel that its fair that one or two people can determine what other people get for contribution. We need to communicate this as a group. I understand that Paul and Scott went ahead and created documentation for this report, but I know Chase and I have been trying to get a hold of people (with no real success, even through this forum) so that we could contribute. I am not satisfied with the way this first report went, and I will not let the second one go the same way.

So I agree with contribution to the forum, but we need to have a separate meeting time where we can actually meet in person

Sorry for a semi-rant, but I'm not happy at all the way this report went down.


-shawn

Let me preface with: nothing has be graded thus far. No one is being penalized for their contributions, or lack of contributions. However, it is fair to say Scott and I put in the lion-share of contributions vis-a-vis the last delivery. I want this to be an example of what needs to change. Traditional meetings are nice, but when they are not possible--as was the case for the last delivery--work still needs to be delegated and completed. That is what the forum is for.

Secondly, to reiterate: Initiative is expected. I admit partial fault for not being better at rallying efforts and resources from everybody. This month has been hard on me; I will try better in the future. I digress, however. Being team leader doesn't mean I have to dictate when and how stuff gets done, just that I make sure it gets done. I did that, and Scott was a great help. He and I divvied up the workload for the delivery and got it done. It seems to me, a reasonable expectation, that everyone at least produce prototypes of various line items, if not completed items. But that was not done this time.

I'm not a stickler on contributions: make an honest effort and you will get the credit you expect.

With all this said, the decision to produce the given contribution percentages for this delivery was a decision of necessity and fairness. I want everyone to earn equal credit come the final delivery--what has happened so far is not the way to go about that.

We all know that the first delivery didn't go how we all wanted by now. And yes, I realize that Scott and Paul did all of the work, but I am not going to allow it to look like I didn't try. I had tried to get in contact with everyone about 3 weeks ago, and Shawn was the only reply I got, then I tried again about a week later. That is when I found out about the forum.

The forum is a great place to communicate, if everyone is checking it regularly and using it to answer others questions. So I then used the forum to try and see if anyone was available to meet. Again, the only one to post on that thread, was Shawn.

Now I have been checking this forum regularly and if I had seen something that I knew I should work on I really wanted to, because I knew we needed to get the first report done. I saw that Paul had posted an item at the beginning of the week it is due. Now that part is great, finally I can see something getting done, so I posted a question about the use case, and I fully intended on working on it too. But the response I got implied that it was already being worked on...
I don't feel we need a bunch of people working on the same thing at the same time. If you make progress, post what you have done, and others can critique and help make it better, hopefully.

Also you stated in the last post that you (Paul) and Scott divvied up the work. I don't see any posts on the forum regarding this divvying up of the work, which is where I was showed to go to communicate. And for most of the group I feel like I have no better way of communicating to you guys. I did not make myself unavailable, I emailed everyone. And if you need to email me, I have a smartphone, like a lot of people do now. If you would like to email me (I will post it at the end of this reply if you don't have it), I usually get it within 20 minutes at the longest (In most circumstances). So if you were splitting up the work via some other communication, I cannot help that cause I cannot see that communication.

Otherwise, it looks as if we are at least trying to communicate now. So hopefully we can post things earlier, and not start the work the week it is due. That will give us plenty of time as a group to give helpful criticism and improve our project to its full potential.

If you feel as if we have still not resolved our issues, then maybe we need to talk to Dr. Grant and take more serious leaps toward a solution let me know. Otherwise, we should all be able to make this next report a better reflection of what we are all individually capable of doing when we work together.

--Chase
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