Reflection Report Presentations/ SA/ Communication Skills Name: Süleyman YILDIRIM Date: 07/11/2012 Name coach: Cynthia Schreuder Previous experiences (before OOTI) on: 1. Meeting Skills During my education (BSc and MSc), I attended several meetings. However, I was speaking my mother language except from Portugal. Therefore, I was more active and could express myself better than now. 2. Presentation skills I cannot say I had enough experience with presentations. I am not used to speak in public. I need to improve that skill. 3. Working in groups I liked to work with people that I like or get on well each other. On the other hand, I had difficulties to work with people who behaved liked they were the best. 4. Other 0
Presentation Skill I divided my presentation in two categories, namely personal and professional life. At the beginning, I tried to influence the audience with a humor referring to the Ottoman empire, Suleyman the Magnificent. After I talked about myself and family, I explained my professional life consisting of my education and experiences. Lastly, I finished the presentation with my objectives and motivations about the OOTI programme. My objective was to convey the information about myself including the personal and professional life. I believe that I did it well. The only negative thing is that I didn t finish the presentation in 15 minutes. It took longer. I want to learn to be relaxed during the presentation. I also want to improve my time management skills. I want to be able to impress the audience after presentations. I need to practice. Every two weeks, I will prepare a presentation and make a rehearsal on my own by keeping time. I will also ask help from my colleagues for feedback. 1
Reflection on the Self Assessment Group Work; City Expansion I was mostly a controller in this assignment. I was the time keeper and the only person who was checking whether everything is going in order. Before the assignment, I didn t set a goal for the subject. I was a good listener and reasonable during the assignment. I think I was a good team member. However, I couldn t come up with a solution while other people were discussing the problems. The most important problem was that I was not fluent in English. While I was thinking what I was planning to say, other people had already come up with a proposal. I was also not excited about the domain like my colleagues. Therefore, I didn t propose ideas. After the assignment, I realized that I was not comfortable with remaining in the background. I am creative person and I have to show the others my potential. I should be more assertive and defend my ideas with strong arguments and metaphors. I also want to appreciate my own ideas. I should express myself fluently in English in order to be assertive and defend my ideas. For that reason, I will watch a movie with subtitles and take notes once a week. Moreover, every day I will learn 5 new words as I did when I was preparing for IELTS exam. In addition, for the first in-house project, I will rehearse what I am going to say to the group members before each meeting. 2
Group Work; Rocket Simulation My role was a Program Manager. At first, I was very uncomfortable about the idea of leading people. However, I thought that I had to do my best to satisfy my role. First, I proposed my team to understand their roles. Second, I prepared a strategy about what we were going to do. Then, I followed the plan. I set a goal to be more assertive during discussions, after the City Expansion project. I tried to follow my role as a Program Manager and assign tasks to my team. As a team, we had a very well structured plan. The communication inside the group was very effective. I manage the team well until the end of the assignment! Everybody in my team did their role as I described. However, I missed two things: risk management and taking initiative as to communicating with other teams. I delegated the communication to the communication manager but although I felt the need to interfere with other teams, I thought that it was the communication manager s responsibility. At the end, we didn t make an agreement with NASA team. In the end, they refused our offer. However, I still think that it was not our fault! I followed the written description. I want to learn the risk management as well as being adaptive to the changes during software projects. I also want to learn how to assign the tasks to the team members. I will practice during the first in-house project. As I am not the project leader in the project, it may not be possible to assign tasks. However, if I realize a shortage about the process, I will inform it the project leader. As for the risk management, I will make a plan for my duties in the team on each Monday. At the end of the week, I will control what I have achieved and whether I need to change my strategy. I will also take the initiative to organize a meeting with Test Managers from other groups at the 4 th week of the project in order to exchange information about software testing techniques. I will continue these meetings until the end of the project. 3
Group Work; Desert Case This time I was very active. I used the tips that I acquired from the previous simulations. I tried to be more assertive and it worked! I proposed ideas and didn t avoid arguing with other people in order to defend my ideas. I think I influenced the team about structuring the problem. I remind them to follow our plan during the discussion. I was the time keeper and warned the team about the time. My objective was to be involved in the solution process more actively than the previous project. I mostly work on structuring the discussion. I was active during the discussion. As a team, we also built a structure for solving the problem in the beginning. Everyone was involved in the discussion. However, it turned out to be a chaotic discussion in the middle of the process. We sometimes talked at the same time. There were subgroups talking to each other. In that project, I realized that a problem well understood is a problem almost solved. As a professional, I want to learn to allocate enough time to understand the requirements of the project given by customer. I will practice during the first in-house project. I am going to revise the requirements of the current project with team members each week. In addition, after each meeting with client, I will evaluate which requirements still exist and what parts of the project need to be improved. If there are changes, I will continue to acquire necessary technical skills as fast as possible. 4
Two-way Conversations My role was a project leader who was forming a multidisciplinary project team and looking for a person that would motivate the team to increase the production. I had an interview with an actor and I convinced him to participate in my team. I concentrated on just convincing him regardless of the price. I started the conversation very politely and continued that attitude. Actually, the conversation was going so well that I forgot that I was the recruiter! I wanted to convince the actor to participate in my team. My voice and attitude was good. I was polite and quite professional. I accomplished to convince the actor but I was not critical. Therefore, I accepted most of the things that the actor wanted. I want to be critical when discussing about a topic or arguing with another person. I will practice during the first in-house project. For each meeting with team members, I will be not simply accept the other people s ideas if I have some doubts. 5
Other: My master s project I worked as a researcher for a national research project at the last year of my master s degree. I was a member of a team which consists of four people. My role was to develop a part of the software system. I usually worked alone as there was nobody studying at that topic. My objective was to learn a new programming language, software development tool, translate what I learned to the colleagues and develop basic software prototype. As I studied alone, there was no other person that I can ask for help. There were also problems with other group members who regarded my work as an easy job. In other words, they did not appreciate my studies. However, I learned the language and succeeded to implement the system that I was responsible for. I also submitted a paper to a top journal with my supervisors. Although the paper was rejected, we received review with 18 pages which was a useful guide for the future of the project. If I have a problem with colleagues, I would like to resolve it in a short time. I will practice during the first in-house project. If there is a misunderstanding among members in the team, I will talk to the persons in order to maintain healthy relationship. 6
Reflection on the workshop Communication Skills I made a presentation about explaining the OOTI to the clients. My objective was to use my personal experience, tie it to the domain and draw a circle. I also wanted to use the room by walking around. I included the presentation my personal story about software engineering and used a metaphor about music. Then, I tried to tie the metaphor to the software design process in which the team work was essential. I was good at making people to remind the presentation by telling a movie about Mozart. However, I couldn t end the presentation as I desired. In other words, I couldn t finish the circle in the end. I want to be more relaxed during the presentation and impress the audience. I am going to prepare short presentations, say 5 minutes, twice a week. I will also use that technique in the Bosch project when transferring my knowledge to the team members in weekly meetings. 7