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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, August 22, 2007

Year 1 Retrospection: What I Learned, What I Need to Improve


In this blog entry, I wanted to go back and reflect on my first year at CMU West: what happened, how things changed… and what I need to improve on.

About a year ago, I went on to attend orientation: there were quite a few of us, and we all had very different motives for joining. Some of us were fresh out of school, and some of us had up to 25 years of working experience. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, except for one thing: I didn’t like my job and the way things were starting to turn out for me.

Orientation was a lot of fun: we did all kinds of activities, I got to talk with very interesting people, and get an idea of what the program was going to be like (at the time, I was signed up as a Technical Track student). We got to talk with former and current students, and I met my first team. The first semester (Foundations of Software Engineering) had quite a bit of coding and meetings, understanding how classes worked and faculty’s expectations. For me, it was also about working in a team: learning how to depend on other people’s work and building trust. I went through that part with great pain (as I’m sure my teammates will attest).

For the second semester (Requirements), I was with brand new teammates: most of whom I had not really had the chance to talk to before the class. We had three people in California, one in Seattle, and one in Atlanta. That’s when I started to understand the importance of team dynamics and how growing together as a team influences the efficiency of your work. We had been introduced to the Tuckman Model of team building during orientation (the four phases of team building being forming, storming, norming and performing), but now we really got to see the model in action. And our faculty continued to reinforce our team building by helping us stay introspective and reflect on our learnings. We did a pretty good job and I was happy with how we eventually came together.

Finally, the third semester (Architecture) was interesting: in the beginning, I felt like out team was the most lethargic team I had been on. I had one former teammate on that team, and we both thought there was something wrong with the team and how we operated. During the second half of the semester, I became team manager and tried to fight this as much as I could: trying to involve people, make them talk and have fun together.

Here are a few of the comments I got in my peer evaluation (not all comments are here, and not all questions either).

My most positive contribution to the team:

  • Assertive in making decisions for the team.
  • Good understanding of issues involved.
  • His ability to be personable to the rest of the team. A good team leader in making sure that everyone gets his/her chance to talk during the meeting and getting inputs from everyone on group decisions.

What could I do to make higher contributions to team learning:

  • Maybe Rom could show a little more interest in deliverables he is not directly involved in.
  • Try to motivate the team to do more than what's just required.
  • As a team leader, maybe try to develop a team learning plan so he can host a learning session where everyone gets a chance to learn from everyone else.

So, it looks like I achieved what I wanted: the whole team felt involved and enjoyed me as a team lead. However, it looks like I overlooked some of the learning aspect while doing that: I was so preoccupied with making the team “good” that I totally missed other important aspects, such as team learning. That almost looks like the opposite of where I was a year ago: I wasn’t really interested in teams but only in my own self-improvement. Now that I understand what a high-performing team is, I should put more investment into the individuals on that team.

I’ve made some progress, but there are definitely things that I need to work on. Namely, I need to learn not just to view the team as one entity, but also as individual people with unique strengths and weaknesses, and create bonds with them. I have to assimilate the methodology and make it mine, and become human again in my relations with others.

However, in one week, the program is about to take a 180-degree turn: this is when I won’t be involved with Technical Track students anymore but will start the management-specific part of the Development Management program. And you can already see that from the list of books we have to buy (no technical books per se, all management books).

It looks like the course format is going to be different too: we’ll see how that plays out.

For now, I’ll enjoy the vacation with my family.

posted by Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley @ 10:46 AM  0 comments

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