SEAM

The Team

Here are the team's members and what they learned while working on this project.

Nick Tedesco I learned a lot through managing the "Collapse" software engineering team. I think the main thing I will take away from this experience is the importance of communication. The ambiguities inherent with software engineering make it essential for there to be a continuous flow of communication between the developers and the client. As the team leader, it was my responsibility to make sure this was taking place. It also was very important for me to be keeping abreast of the progress so that I could make sure that the project was proceeding as planned and on schedule. Throughout this semester I have been encouraged by the motivation and effort the students have put into this project. As a result of taking this course, I have a solid knowledge of how software engineering works in the real world.

Katherine Chung Software Engineering has taught me what it is like to work on a large scale project with a large team. Before this experience, all my programming experiences were solo efforts or projects with one other person. A project of this scale needs to be carefully planned and thought-out. Communication between team members / subgroups is very important. Having good communication between the team and the client is just as important. Another great thing I've learned about working in large teams is that the more teammates you have, the greater the breadth of knowledge your group will have as a whole. The overall project becomes much less intimidating when you know you have an entire team of people that can help you out if you ever get stuck on a problem.

James Crawford In this class I learned the importance of team work and coordination between team members. I also gained valuable experience with writing a real world application that will get actual use. Also, I learned some C# programming and how to write applications for a barcode scanner with Windows Mobile 2003. Most importantly I was able to tie in knowledge from my prior C.S. classes. I believe our team successfully implemented the project and that our client will be more than satisfied. I am thankful that I was able to be a part of this team.

Tianzhou (James) Duan Throughout this Software Engineering class, I have experienced many new situations while working with my team members. Unlike previous courses, teamwork here is required to succeed. Because of this, I have learned much about the group dynamics involved in having a successful team. The most important factors in determining success or failure are communication, leadership, and hard work. Our team members are all very dedicated to the team's success, and their work shows it. One person alone cannot possibly finish the entire project, so each individual must rely on everyone else. Similarly, the entire team also relies on each individual. If even one person does not put forth the required effort, the whole team suffers. This co-dependency can either make or break a team. In our case, I believe we have succeeded.

Stuart Kimmel Working with the collapse team here at Maryland was an incredible hands on experience. Realizing working with a larger group of individuals that communication would be the key to this project. This time we were allowed to put all of our heads together and come out with a better overall result. The change from submitted projects being throw away to actual application out in the real world, WOW. I believe our team did an outstanding job and hopefully our efforts will help out all who use it.

Sameer Jain Software engineering is a class that I've wanted to take for awhile and I think it was definitely worth it. I've learned to work in teams, as oppose to solo projects that we have had in every other class. This is a great skill to learn because most jobs in the real world are not solo projects. I also think that separating each team into subteams has shown us the different components that go into a final piece of software. Being on the docs team, I have realized that coding is not the only thing that goes into the production of software.

Ryan Martin Software engineering is unlike any other class offered in the computer science department at Maryland. Here the students are introduced to real world software development. Instead of developing a program solely for academic evaluation, we are developing software to help firefighters respond faster to a disaster. In the midst of documenting your development, the pressures of real deadlines and communicating with a team of developers the gap between being a student and becoming a professional is bridged.

Paul Mudahar My experience with Collapse was incredibly enlightening. As team leader of the barcode team, I learned to coordinate and communicate with numerous people for the implementation of an application. Throughout the semester we learned to feed off each of our skills to create a better more effective app for the client.

Christophe Santini Working with Mr. Lofland and the Montgomery County Fire Department has been an incredibly rewarding experience. For the first time in my college career, I was given the opportunity to create software that will actually be used, but more importantly, the opportunity to be a part of a project that could potentially help to save lives. I am very grateful for the chance that I was given and the support of my CMSC435 TAs and professor.

Stephanie Tan I learned more about how C# and ASP.NET can be effectively used together to create a website with higher scalability and efficiency through an object-oriented approach as opposed to conventional scripting. I am glad to have an opportunity to expand my skills repertoire. Thank you MDTF1!

The Availability Website Team: James Duan, Stephanie Tan

The Barcode Team: Christophe Santini, Ryan Martin, Paul Mudahar, James Crawford

The Docs Team: Sameer Jain, Katherine Chung, Stuart Kimmel (not pictured)