The work-reflection-learning cycle - Department of Computer and ...

member skilled in the technology. He thus acknowledges the view that improving
technical skills is essential to a positive project experience.
4.4 Through the workshop tasks, different perspectives are taken on important issues
We see that the teams, by going through the 8 tasks, revisit issues of importance to
their project. In task 7, answers frequently can be seen as ‘re-evaluating experience’,
e.g. as major issues from the curve explanations are addressed in the lessons learned.
The examination of issues from different perspectives sometimes reveals tensions
and what appear as contradictions. These add to the picture of the dynamics and
development of the project and fuel reflection on the process. An example from team P
illustrates this. During task 5, Max explains that he was ‘nagging’ the team (Excerpt 1).
Later, Sean explains a downturn in his curve during the same period: “Max was away
for a week, and that was good for everyone. After that, it just went steadily upwards.“
During task 7, explaining about roles in the project, Finlay says that he and Max, as an
early bird and a B-person, respectively, had been quarreling a lot. Max says he had
unofficial roles like ‘A****le-Max’ and ‘Fusser-Max’. Answering what he had become
better at, Max says “accepting that people are different”, e.g. in terms of preferred work
hours. About lessons learned, Sean says: “Don’t make conflicts that can be avoided”,
explaining that sometimes, people had been “on the verge of psychotic outbursts”. His
comment leads to discussion and agreement in the team that they had never let the sun
go down on their quarrels, which were never personal. The facilitator refers to the
whiteboard, asking if it reflects who had been quarreling the most, Sean looks at the
curves (Figure 1), pauses, and says: “Yes, Finlay and Max” – which evokes laughter.
During task 8, the team summarizes: Max: “ was awesome, really.”
Finlay: “We reached our goal.” [..] Max:”It would have been worse if we had had a
team member that we did not get along so well with” [..] ”We are largely similar, the
whole bunch.” Ellis:”I personally could not have had it better with the team really.”
4.5 Students perceive the workshop as useful
Students’ perception of the insights gained through the workshop can be read from
the course evaluation, in which agreement to the following two statements was rated: 1)
“The postmortem workshop gave me insights about the project.” 2) “In another project
in the future, I would suggest the use of timeline and experience curves to help the team
reflect on the process”. 44 out of 46 students handed in the form, giving a 96% response
rate. To statement 1, 2% of the students responded “strongly disagree” or “disagree”,
25% responded “neither agree nor disagree”, and 73% responded “agree” or “strongly
agree”. To statement 2, the respective percentages were 2%, 39% and 59%. From this,
we may conclude that the students generally considered the postmortem approach
useful to their project and worthwhile applying in another project.
5. Discussion
In this section, we discuss the relevance of our postmortem approach to SE education
and the adequacy and possible improvements of the specific workshop design.
5.1 Relevance to SE education
Our findings suggest that the timeline and experience curve technique is adequate for
postmortem reflection in SE student teams. Workshop observation indicated that the aspects
of reflection outlined by Boud et al. are generally supported. The individual perspectives of
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