Fall 2007

• Attended two of the Customer Prep Team meetings where we discussed, laid out, and finalized the GUI mockups to present to the customer.
  
• Attended the Authoring Team meeting where we fleshed out a list of method signatures that satisfied our current and possible future needs. A system architecture is a lot more than just a list of method signatures.  Does anyone have a clear notion of what any given piece of the system is supposed to be doing?  -- SW
  
• Attended the first customer meeting where we discussed views on project direction, presented our current progress, and received the request for next week's deliverables (mockups of how trust works and data input).

• Due to lack of communication, missed the customer prep team meeting where the core of the work was done. I found out about the meeting after it took place when mockups were posted on owlnet. I was not told about the meeting because they knew I was busy and didn't want to bother me. While this miscommunication had very little impact (had I heard about the meeting, I would have gone, but would not have been able to offer much in terms of core work as I have no experience with Photoshop), I feel this lack of communication will have more dire consequences when the project gets into full swing in the months to come.
  
• Was officially the worst dressed at the customer meeting.
  

• In the future, we can avoid communication problems by communicating in a much more concrete way, via sharepoint or email. Verbal agreements should not be the only basis for communicating information, and at the very least should be supported by email/sharepoint which is much less likely to be misconstrued.  "AVO" = Avoid Verbal Orders  -- SW
  
• I will be getting a set of dress shirts and slacks this weekend (currently I only have a tuxedo which is definitely overkill). Underlying this is my taking the customer-client relationship less seriously than the rest of the class, which means I'll definitely be realigning my priorities in terms of treating this project not in terms of just another class.  Good!

• We are definitely on much better terms with the customer. The customer meeting had a very friendly overtone to the discussions that took place.
• We've taken splitting off into groups to a new level. Not only have we split off into a set of groups, we've divided into two sets of groups. This means we can focus on more issues like preperation for the customer meeting, future technologies to more code related topics like authoring and data management. This also means we get more exposure working with others who we might otherwise not get into contact with if we were in a single set of groups
  

• We recognized the need for accomplishing goals within a timeframe, and to that effect, Brad named Hubert the Time Tzar. Within the same meeting though, when Hubert tried to alert the presenter that he was over his time limit, Brad said it was OK and overruled Hubert. The put pressure on the last presenter to compress his information as much as possible and also caused our class to run late once again. With his authority undermined by the very person who bestowed it upon him, we never heard so much as a peep from the Time Tzar in the meetings to come.
  Good point! -- SW This is certianly not what I intended to do. In fact I was trying to tell Corey to hurry up and move on, but wasn't iron fisted enough to really kick him off. If I was interpreted as overrulling the time czar I'm really sorry about that. -brad
• Actually, we hardly heard a peep from anyone at all in the customer meeting, aside from Brad, the presenters, and Corey. For the most part, it seemed like we were observing a dialogue between the customer and Brad. The majority of people in the meeting played a very passive role, while a select few engaged in active discussion.
Would you say this is necessarily inappropriate for a customer meeting? If it's a problem for only a few people to speak up, maybe it has something to do with the "presenters/PM" setup that you went in with. --Chelsea

• The next time we confer authority to someone, we have to make sure his duties and privileges are well defined, so as to avoid conflicts of authority (does the Time Tzar get to silence the Project Manager if he's running over his limit?).
• It might be worthwhile to consider a group approach to the customer meeting, where the groups we've delineated each get time alloted with the customer and present their findings the the customer and the rest of the class. The customer gets to ask and answer questions of that group. This way we all get more direct exposure to the customer in terms of his needs and feedback.

Good suggestions!  -- SW