Upon starting this Fall 2022 semester, we were immediately assigned into four different groups with 7-10 group members to tackle a challenge set fourth by the DOE. The project was to make a functional bill tracker to help the DOE essentially filter out the important bills related to them. This is an essential application for the DOE as they want to get as much funding as possible, and sometimes these bills that also carry money with them go under the radar and completely missed. Entering the first few weeks, we hit the ground running by meeting up with our client, making a new project board and assigning new tasks to start on. Nothing about this was an easy feat. A few hardships were endured during the beginning phases of this project such as conflicting time schedules to collaborate with one another outside of the class given hours, communication issues, as well as an unfamiliar techstack as a few members either didn’t have any experience, or had a semester under their belt a few years back.
Another challenge is making sure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to the project’s goals and timeline. It’s important to establish clear guidelines and expectations from the outset, and to regularly check in with the team to make sure that everyone is on track.
Overall, I would say that my experience with my team members were great. Everyone had done their jobs and put in time and effort into the project and I fully understand at times where team memebrs could not allocate as much time due to other conflicts which is understandable. One of the rewards of working on a group project is the opportunity to learn from my peers. Each person on my team Alahele brought their own unique skills and experiences to the table, and by working together, we were able to learn from one another and grow as software engineers. Additionally, working on a team like this enabled me and others to tackle larger and more complex problems that was presented during the project timeline. This was incredibly rewarding for me as I feel like I now have more experience under my belt and can leverage this experience in the near future for sure.
Overall, working on a group project in this software engineering course can be a challenging but rewarding experience given the many hours put in. It’s important to communicate and coordinate effectively, to listen to others’ ideas, and to take advantage of the opportunity to learn from one another. I genuinely think that communication is the best skill to have above all others as this project would have been hindered without the excellent communication that everyone had on board. Needless to say, I was not very interested in the topic of the project when it was given to us, however, I made an effort to create tickets and functionalities of the project that I enjoyed implementing and gained a better understanding of how the Hawaii legislative system works as well as the workflow that a bill goes through to get approved. I do hope to work with a few of my team members on a project in the future.