Final Reflections

With a quick blink of an eye, what seemed to be a torturous semester will soon flicker into fleeting memories of never-ending coding, nervous presentations and sleepless nights. While the length of every semester is the same, what I have experienced this semester is certainly more enriching compared to my first semester in school. One important lesson that I have learnt is that both teamwork and communication are very important factors to perform well in any settings and what I have recognised is that good communication can generally lead to better teamwork.

In my first post I touched on the many important reasons to why communication between people is important, and right now I couldn’t agree more with what I have written. As the group leader, I have to constantly assure that progress are kept within deadlines, every member knows exactly what they are doing, and any abrupt changes made to the project are conveyed to each individual teammate promptly. Without any good forms of communication channel, it would be hard to keep each individual updated with the progress of work. Sometimes, it gets frustrating when I am unable to contact my team members and I believe they feel equally annoyed when they are unable to reach me when the need arises. It appears that remaining contactable and communicable has become a very important part of our lives, especially on occasions where deadlines are tight and work has to be done fast.

In this semester, I also learned to appreciate teamwork to a greater extent. Many of my modules in this semester require tasks to be done in groups; and any attempt to work on these tasks alone would not be sufficient. If work had not been efficiently allocated or if any of the team member’s work is not up to standard, the progress of the work would be majorly crippled. Take for example our CG1102 lab tasks. With deadlines that are within the timeframe of one to two weeks, any delay in individual’s effort will greatly hinder the team’s overall advancement of the project. My team actually encountered moments where we find ourselves frantically piecing the codes written by individual member just hours before the deadline of the lab tasks; this is largely due to mismanaged timelines that resulted in work to be done only towards the end of the deadline. This essentially boils down to my failure to enforce a tighter control on the timelines and the lack of collaboration among members of the team.

In short, regardless of whether my mastery in communication and teamwork have improved or not, what this semester has shown and emphasised is that both communication and teamwork are both important and relevant to the working environment that we have now.


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