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MS in Software Engineering, Development Management Track Blog

Wondering if a Carnegie Mellon degree is right for you? Read about our students' experiences through the MS in Software Engineering, Development Track program.

Linda is a first year part-time student in Carnegie Mellon's MS Software Engineering, Development Management track. She is a Software Developer at Electronic Arts in Redwood Shores, CA. She likes to dance and sing and her favorite videogame is The Beatles RockBand. She enjoys Indian, Japanese, Thai, Italian and Mexican food. She comes from Mexico City, and has being living in CA for the past two years.
Pras Sarkar is a second-year part-time student in the MS Software Engineering Development Management track. He works in Yahoo! Labs. His responsibilities include materializing ideas and concepts into engaging prototypes and demos, some of which ultimately mature into products that Yahoo! visitors use everyday. He is interested in emerging web technologies, social interaction over digital mediums, and creative interfaces that push the boundaries of human computer interaction.
Vineet is a Lead Developer at Boeing and a second year grad student in the part-time MS Software Engineering, Development Management program. He loves reading, playing with his daughter and pursuing the religious aspect of his life. He is an active volunteer of Vedic Cultural Center, a Seattle-based organization dedicated to promote the Vedic (ancient Indian) arts, culture, music and dance.
Truc is a second year part-time student in Carnegie Mellon's MS Software Engineering, Development Management track. She is a Software Engineer at Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale, CA. She loves food and enjoys anything related to food: going to different restaurants, cooking, watching the Food Network, and of course, eating!

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Aaak! I’m the Team Leader!


In my last entry, I was celebrating the end of the first Architecture “mini.” Well, now I’m going to share about the beginning of the second half (or “mini”) of the Architecture course. We spent the first “mini” studying various architectures and evaluating them. Since each course builds upon the last, we now need to take that knowledge and choose an architecture for our project.

Each course is set up as if we were employees in a fictitious company, ND Software Systems (random trivia - the “ND” is a reference to “Andy”, in homage to CMU’s illustrious founder, Andrew Carnegie). In this particular class, my teammates and I are acting as a small team of architects and technical experts; and our goal is to select an architecture to present to our VP of Engineering, our VP of Marketing and other executives (all role-played by several members of the faculty).

I didn’t think this would be too difficult a task, except for one thing: I am team lead now. I was chosen because I had never been a team lead here at Carnegie Mellon West before. And that shouldn’t be a problem, except that I have a few faults:
· I’m strongly opinionated
· I tend to talk a lot
· I have always had a hard time at social relationships

I guess you can see how those could be problems when you are supposed to lead a team to success. Since I have been at Carnegie Mellon West I have made a lot of progress in resolving some of these flaws: I have had to read a few books on team communication, and leadership (as well as some books that were not required reading, but recommended by faculty). And while those books could have helped me even if I wasn’t enrolled in this program, the real learning and transformation comes through being forced to put my newly acquired knowledge to the test. What’s nice is that this is a safe “sandbox” for me to play in – I get to flex my leadership muscles, with room for mistakes and growth. If I perform poorly as a leader, my teammates will let me know. And I will probably ask a few team members for their feedback next week.

So far, I have tried to role model a few things: start meetings on time, try to stick to the allocated times on the agenda, and get everybody to talk and express their opinions. Still, sometimes I feel like I’m somewhat authoritarian and close-minded. The good part about being able to experiment with this in school is that I have a opportunity to improve with very little pressure.

This is good, because I can try to improve and “grow my antennae” as one of my former team advisors used to tell us. The odd thing about managing people and talking to them is that somewhere in the gap, you know there is a problem even if nobody really wants to talk about it. I think the difference between good managers and bad managers is that good managers know how to recognize when there are issues and take action, whereas bad managers will stay focused on their objectives while forgetting that they need the whole team to achieve them.

Am I a good team leader? I don’t know yet, but I’m trying to improve. This is both a learning experience and a personal challenge. I want to know if and how I can deal with people other than through predefined social conventions: can I improvise? Can I help the team get the most out of each and every member? Am I bound to fail? Can I overcome my timidity?

I will keep you guys posted.

posted by Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley @ 3:38 PM  0 comments

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