The First Problem Set

Today was the first lecture in CS3216. It was awesome, and scary, and inspiring all at the same time. This isn't going to be a full post. Just going to scribble a quick series of thoughts that struck me on the way home.

Thesis statement: I believe Prof Ben has already handed us our first problem set, whether we know it or not:

Problem Set #1
You are in a group of 40+ people with different talents, personalities, and skill-sets. You are told that you must select three other individuals to form an app-development team. You are given four days to accomplish this.

Conditions:
Ideally, your team should have 1 programmer, 1 designer, and 1 marketer. (This is a loose condition - it is possible to have multiple people in multiple roles; or even in overlapping ones).

You are given an incomplete data set about the pool of 40+ people on which you must base your decisions. This data set consists of a Human Bingo sheet, a show and tell session, and a bunch of blog posts per person. Therefore, the most 'valuable' people in the eyes of this pool - as of the beginning of this problem set - would be those who are a) good orators/communicators b) good programmers and c) good artists. This is so because the above three properties are the easiest to communicate to the class within the context of the three activities. Other equally important qualities such as personality, compatibility and attitude cannot be easily communicated through Human Bingo/show-and-tell/blog posts.

All 40+ people are told that they should look for the 'best' people, to form the 'dream' team. This means that the three people you are looking for are themselves looking for three other people, one of which may not be you. If that isn't bad enough, some of these people may be seen as more 'valuable' than others, and may recognize this fact, and so would sit out the hunting to receive and evaluate multiple team offers.

You may not interview possible applicants, and all teams must be finalized by Friday.

What are you to do?

The way I see it, there are two possible approaches to this problem.

Approach 1: go out and find people, assemble a team, and have them work with you.

Approach 2: wait to be approached.

Approach 1 is largely dependent on your ability to persuade and convince three other people to work with you. If you are intent on working with competent people, you must first prove to them that you have something of equal or more value to bring to the team. Approach 1 allows you to gather the team that you think is best. It may also, however, backfire on you - especially if you do not have significant persuasive skills, or if you are not of high-enough perceived 'value'. If this sounds like a popularity contest, then it probably is - to a certain extent.

Approach 2 works for two kinds of people. The kind of person who believes that the best team may only be formed by luck, and the kind who is of high perceived 'value'. The approach does work if you are fairly 'valuable' in one of the above three areas of value; however there is a risk that you would be left out if you wait too long to respond.

Luck also plays a big part in this selection. There is no way of knowing if you might gel well as teammates and friends before actually trying it out during the development process. As mentioned earlier, the current data set does not include valuable pieces of information like personality, compatibility and attitude (along with other 'soft' intangibles). These are make-or-break qualities, and they may even override technical ability in terms of importance, if what we read from the past CS3216 blogs are true.

So. Presented with this problem, what do you do?

The answer: I have no idea. Not yet, anyway. And that kinda sorta really scares me.