CS200 Written Assignment # 5
Due Friday December 12, 2008 at 3:00PM
NO LATE PERIOD
Nearly all significant software development is done as part of a team. For many of
you, these assignments may have been your first experience in team
programming. Being on a team means contributing to achieving a common goal –
getting a good grade on the assignments and learning new material! This
assignment asks you to assess how well you and your partners have worked
together.
This assignment will require you to evaluate yourself and your programming
partners in your two pairings. The purpose of the assignment is to 1) encourage
you to think about what makes a good team and each person a good team
member, 2) to give you practice in evaluating your own and other’s performance,
and 3) to give you the opportunity to provide feedback on how well your teams
worked, above and beyond how well you did on your programs.
For each team, you will be asked to honestly assess how that team did and how
each person contributed to it. Although you will be asked to assign specific scores
to both you and your partners, the important part is the justification for the
scores. Your grade on this assignment will be based in part on how well (honestly,
thoroughly, appropriately) you evaluate team performance as well as on how your
partners assessed you.
Guidelines for Evaluation
We will not offer a checklist that produces a quantitative assessment of how
much each person was worth. Instead, what follows are suggestions of points to
consider.
Objectivity and Responsibility: When one is required to evaluate another
person, one wields power over the other; with this power comes the responsibility
to make well-considered judgments. You need to evaluate others as objectively as
possible considering what was done in light of what was expected.
Concrete Justification: You need to provide information that would help
someone improve or justify your numeric evaluation for them. Use examples of
what was done well and poorly for each person. It is ok to have encountered
problems if you and your teammate recovered from them.
Criticism Should be Constructive: Webster defines criticize (first definition)
as: "To judge the merits and faults of; analyze and evaluate." Note that
“criticism'' can include praise. It is your chance to laud your partner, if you had a
particularly good one.
