Moving new people onto teams needs patience.
Two people mentioned something the other day, which made me realise I’d not mentioned adjusting student teams. It happens all the time, but is often overlooked. Thanks for pointing this out. It’s appreciated.
This is yet another example of student projects covering life skills, professional skills. We should emphasis these are not just software development skills. These are skills they will need to use all through life. It just happens that software engineering provides a nice, long example where they can practice these skills.
Student teams are less challenging in management than employed teams working on bigger commercial projects. We don’t need to consider promotion, people changing companies, retirement, or other issues. We both need to consider health issues sometimes, but that is the main common issue.
Student teams are normally stable, and unchanging for the length of their assignment and project. Membership changes sometimes if the course covers more than a term, in my experience.
This is a big opportunity for old and new team members. The team gain experience in helping the new person, which is something they will do again and again in life. The new person gains experience in joining an established team, which is also something they will do again and again through life.
Keep balancing teams to make them diverse. Diverse teams are the best teams.
The personal request to change teams
Sometimes after you announce team membership a student will request a change. I always grant these requests. At the time I don’t know, and I don’t ask why. I assume that (a) I am in not a position to judge how much something will affect a student who will be working with another one for a considerable period of time, and (b) if it is a personal issue, then I am not in a position to deal with this either. It is easier to say ‘yes’, and find a way to make it work.
Personal requests come at the start of the course, normally. This makes them easier to resolve, and also means the students affected are all in the same situation. They learn to know each other, and ways of working together from the start.
Adjusting teams for a new term
In a following term after a course starts changes to membership have a larger impact. This happens for different reasons. They can usually be handled in a similar manner.
Student teams sometime lose a team member when a new term starts for various reasons. A student might’ve never appeared, as expected, and withdrew from the course. Othertimes, students leave when an exchange visit us ends, or they go to a foreign university to start their own exchange.
The new term also brings new students. These are new foreign exchange students, and returning home students, who were away on foreign exchanges.
Being a former foreign exchange student myself, I’m always excited to meet these students. I know some of the issues they are experiencing, so sympathise with them. I also hope they have a great time too.
The outcome is the same: balance any vacancies with the new people. Balance for me is this:
a) pairing women together on a team, so no woman is on her own. I’d rather have a team without women, than one on her own, because that is often a frustrating, and unpleasant experience for the woman.
b) pairing culturally similar people on a team where possible. This usually reduces communication and language issues, and avoids someone being isolated on the team.
c) sometimes there are age issues too, when mature students are participants too. Then, as above, I aim to pair them together. If it’s only one in the course, then that is also usually not an issue.
These balancing steps aid team diversity, which makes them more likely to have a successful group collaboration. Diversity means more perspectives on issues, due to the variety of experiences team members have. This is why I try to avoid all-male teams: they tend to be too homogeneous, even if they are culturally diverse.
Guide the new people as they join their team
The new people bring fresh perspectives, and sometimes new expertise too. They have the newcomer advantage: they can ask questions that other team members might be nervous to ask. This is all good for the team.
The challenge is that they are new. They missed the experiences and workshops that the other team members went through. They might be lacking in some skills, and knowledge of team working. This means they need some guidance before they can fully contribute to the work of the team.
When it’s only a handful of new people, I always sat down with them individually to discuss how they settled into the city and university, as well as what background they bring to the course. Sometimes you find they have a friend here already, or are having issues finding things in the city. Help them where you can.
You can also ask them what they want out of the course. Is there a language, or skill they are wanting to gain practice with? Remind them this is their chance to gain experience, and practice new skills. This are issues to discuss further with the team. They might be able to work on them too. But they have to mention them, and ask.
I also talk to the team to offer support on their introduction to the new person. Tell them the basics, who they are, what I know that the person might bring to the team. I also remind them to help the person get set up logistically with all of the code and tools too. It’s never enough to just know when and where the team meets.
Check in on the new people and the team
Once the new people are in their new teams there is still more work to do. You need to check they are adjusting to how the team works, and taking part in the work too.
Usually it all settles down ok, and there are no issues. Sometimes, it takes the new person longer than expected to settle into a routine. Help them as you can, and point them to materials from the last term, if these are collaboration issues. Maybe ask a team member to pair with them on something too, if the team isn’t already doing this.
Remind them that when all team members are comfortable in the work, then anyone can take up issues. It is in their interest to help the new person, as that helps the team. This is their opportunity to practice their professional team skills.
This post is part of a project pulling together my materials and ideas about Teaching Team Collaboration: the Human-Side of Software Development for software development to students.
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The ideas above are from my book 101+ Ideas to Improve Team Collaboration, which covers all of these little things that students can do to improve their collaboration. Also available via Kindle.