Teaching and facilitation for team work is generally on the conflicts
that occur with the project work process and schedule.
An important area that is often missed by performing teams
is to take the time to present conflicting scenarios to consider alternatives.
Questioning assumptions, understanding constraints and documenting them to
justify the decisions is part of any progressive project proposals. Students
and facilitators require training to include this very important aspect of
openness in decisions. The dialogue among teams needs to be free and focused on
the subject matter.
While team conflicts and resolutions focus on the people and
project level issues, the conflicts that arise for progress in the subject
matter cannot be neglected. In the case
of peer reviews conducted for software development, this aspect comes into play
to ensure software quality and adhere to service level agreements. Conflicting
interests of stakeholders need to be managed in a collaborative manner to meet
the requirements of the software application. With several customers and
consumers for every software endeavor, both standardization and customization
need balancing approaches to come to consensus.
Peer reviews or code inspections are considered a “best
practice” conducted in a collaborative environment among the groups of
developers and authors. They are conducted face to face as well as in asynchronous
settings focusing on the software to be developed. It requires preparation to be able to review
a peer or team member’s work. Unfamiliarity about the team member’s work will
not allow for a proper review and is an obstacle to progress. During properly
practiced reviews, the author and reviewer roles become quite “blurred” as the
process encourages exchange of views as well as taking on each other’s
responsibilities towards better output for the product. Change management is a
continuous process that is associated with the review process. The review
requires expertise and only senior level, experienced members need to be
involved in the process. It certainly encourages collaboration and discussion
in very novel ways (Rigby, P.,
Cleary, B., Painchaud, F., Storey, M., & German, D. (2012)).
Reference:
Rigby, P.,
Cleary, B., Painchaud, F., Storey, M., & German, D. (2012). Contemporary
Peer Review in Action: Lessons from Open Source Development. IEEE Software,
29(6), 56-61. doi:10.1109/MS.2012.24
http://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_heffernan_dare_to_disagree
