As the secretary of the team, I took the minutes at our progress and review meetings, and documenting all the discussions and decisions we made in the course of the project. Undoubtedly, this is also an important part of project management. While using CVS for documentation, I would not forget our CVS tool-master, Nathan, who really had done a good job in setting the system up and maintaining it.

All of the group members were highly motivated, I had to keep up with the dynamics, recording major and minor changes, discussions and decisions that would ultimately affect the final product. It costs me a fortune to be online permanently, as I had to dial in to be connected. Fortunately, my major task in documentation would not be jeopardised by intermittent dialling in. I found that CVS was a good system to use for effective communications, and it provided well-documented record throughout the development of the project.

From the materials provided by the analysts and the programmers, and decisions made from the discussions from our progress meetings, I prepared the functional specification and produce the final document for submission. I had to work with very tight schedule, especially the night before the submission, as new ideas were kept arising after the cut-off time. The specification was a good yardstick for the development of the program, as each group member can refer back to it as the base.

I was also responsible for preparing the user manual which was an ongoing task. It was quite a challenging task, as the project was as dynamic as changing nearly every hour. We had specified that the user manual for the program Charlie would be provided in both HTML 4.0 and hardcopy versions, therefore, I had to prepare two versions. My experience as a user of software packages when I was working as an engineer gave me some insights of what a good user manual should require.

Nathan wrote the abstract classes used for route generation. He is the programmer writing most of the codes on the classes for finding optimum route. He was the tool-master of our CVS over a repository, and has done a good job in setting the system up and maintaining it.

Nathan is an accountable person and a good team member. He tried his best to meet the deadlines. He is co-operative and accepts other people opinions in his considerations. He diligently fixed bugs that the testers found, and finding bugs himself.

Martin is reliable and hardworking. He diligently filled our emails with CVS messages as he updating the GUI code. He wrote the abstract classes and coding for the GUI classes. He diligently fixed bugs that the testers reported.

Indeed, Martin is a competent and experience programmer. He carried out his tasks very efficiently. Coding for the GUI was a difficult task, though we use the specification as a base, new ideas on enhanced features kept cropping up, especially in those areas where the specification were open to interpretation.

Karen is the most highly motivated members in our group. She did most of the testing on the GUI. She also had done the testing on Dijkstra and other part of the program. These include both creating test harnesses and test data. She had many suggestions for enhancements and improvements.

Karen was the manager behind the scene right from the start, prompting all of us on what were the requirements of the brief on different deliverables, giving constructive suggestions on what to submit. As an analyst she also gave suggestions on implementations and had great contribution on the algorithms.

Karen is reliable and diligent, most of the time, she was ahead of what she was assigned to do. She was another group member who filled our emails with many CVS messages.

At the start of the project, Andy did not make it very clear on undissolved issues and tasks allocation. Some of such issues were relying on what were recorded in the minutes as decisions. Gradually, he learns to become a better manager as the project progresses.

Andy had done a great job in producing the Project Plan, Progress and Final Report. He ensured the work was on schedule. He defined tasks and re-distributed tasks if one or two members were overloaded. Andy listened to opinions of different members of the team, and made constructive decisions to resolve disagreeing issues.

Andy also contributed in ideas, in giving a hand to solve GUI print problem, in coding the Simple algorithm on top of his managerial role. He had done a marvellous job as a project manager.

Dave is adventurous and highly motivated. He brought up some good ideas on route optimising algorithms, 3D terrain/route display etc. Though not all of his suggestions were implemented because of limited time, they brought excitement to the project.

Dave was analyst and tester for the project. He had great contribution to the algorithm design and help Nathan in solving some of the problems in coding. He tested the modules in isolation, test harnesses were written by him for this purpose, and he also tested the whole integration of the system.

He worked very hard and tried his best to sell his brilliant ideas to the group.

Overall, this is a successful project. We worked closely to our specification, project plan and schedule, and were within the budget. All members of the group were co-operative and worked together as a team. There were a few occasions of disagreement, but we sorted these out quite quickly in our meetings and communications. All the group members were competent, and personally well organised. Each one of us was willing to put great effort in achieving the common goal.

Samples of Minutes of meetings, specification, documentation and user manual