16
Sputnik
5y

This is PART 1/2 of a series of rants over the course of a software engineering class years ago.

We were four team members, two had never failed a class, I’ll refer to them as MT and FT, male and female top students, respectively, and an older student with some real world experience who I’ll refer to as SR.

Rant 1: As I was familiar with the agile methodologies I became the Scrum Master and was set with the task of explaining it to the team members, SR showed up late and nobody seemed interested in learning new methodology. At this point I knew we'd have trouble as a team.

Rant 2: FT made up her project proposal without informing anybody, which required a real client/product owner. We only figured it out after her proposal was accepted as the project, so we ended up working with fake requirements.

Rant 3: This one is partly my fault. I researched first and then worked, which meant I was the last to turn up my work. In one activity MT pressures me and I agree to a deadline so everyone can send their work to the teacher in a timely manner. Since I was the last to finish, I was also asked to give the doc some formatting, which I did in a hurry so it wasn't the best.
The next day MT and FT start complaining about me, saying I took too long and that they expect me to do better next time or else. At the same time they were stressed and in a hurry because we had to explain the project outline in front of the class and they didn't study.
Turns out copying and pasting all your work in less than an hour means you don’t learn anything. FT actually asked me for help days before and I sent her a website in English, which she wasn't very good at, so she just ran it through Google Translate and called it a day.
Later FT called me rude for interrupting MT in the presentation, which I did because he started making up stuff about the project.

Rant 4: SR expressed his dislike for school through profanity in variable names and commit messages. This caused MT and FT to dislike him. I thought it was immature but if anything it should’ve been reported to the teacher and move on.

Rant 5: I was stuck trying to get the REST API working for the project Admittedly this was my fault, too, because I was pushing for the usage of things nobody was familiar with for the sake of learning. This coupled with SR’s profanity led to drama and the progress was dropped, starting over from scratch.

At this point I stepped down from the Scrum Master role as nobody seemed to listen anymore.

Comments
  • 1
    This seems to be common problem with group assignments in schools. One way out is to switch groups. But this is not a long term solution. People just are lazy and uncooperative, there is nothing to can do about it. In real life you can switch jobs, and this will be the long term solution ;)
  • 0
    @mt3o I've worked with team members that were lazy or barely showed up and it's usually less stressful because each party knows what to expect. You expect them not to work and they expect to get lower grades or being dropped from the team. That or the underperforming member is given other opportunities to make up for their lack of contribution.

    That was the only time I experienced college students attacking each other to the point the work was disrupted, so it really stood out for me.
  • 0
    Unfortunately, that's something that happens in real world... There are lots of studies about solving such situations, but most effective - is to switch jobs.
  • 1
    This sounds like an awful experience and I am sorry but rant 4 made me laugh a bit
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