TEAM AURORA

We are team ‘B9’, a name that we decide to combine to our new team name, Aurora. B-class stars, as quoted from Wikipedia, and as an analogy to our new team:
“Class B stars are very luminous and blue. […] As B stars are so powerful, they only live for a relatively short time. Thus, due to the low probability of kinematic interaction during their lifetime, they do not, and are unable to, stray far from the area in which they were formed.”
While this highlights our cohesion, our team ‘literal” name, Aurora, defines our dynamism and diversity: “An aurora is a natural light display in the sky predominantly seen in the high latitude regions. Auroras are caused by charged particles, mainly electrons and protons, entering the atmosphere from above causing ionization and excitation of atmospheric constituents, and consequent optical emissions.”
Our team, though being composed of individuals with different backgrounds, believes in the strengths and cohesion of our opinions and skillsets: 6 different personalities, 6 different backgrounds, for only one goal: working together delivering on our promises and creating values for our pairs.

As the new team B9 we have decided upon a few guidelines: * What are the General objectives of the team? Do you have any learning or social goals beyond task accomplishment? How do we know we are being successful at this?
Our common goal is to achieve excellence through in-depth collaboration, resulting in both individual achievements: understanding, growth of leadership skills, improved self-awareness, as well as team achievements: efficient use of resources, creation of new friendships, and delivery through collaboration.
Based on our previous teams projects, we know that time management and collaboration are key components that we are planning on mastering right off the start.

* How will we lead our team? How will we be establishing team leadership? Will the leader be permanent, rotate or task specific? What are the team leader's tasks? Are there other tasks or roles that need to be identified?

Every single members of team B9 adopted the same scheme when it came to their previous teams’ leadership model: appointing a Team Leader on a rotational basis for each and every case. The team leader's election will be based on the nature of the task at hand, and the leader will be in charge of ensuring the following:

a. Monitoring progress: We learned from our past experiences that hitting the deadline on time can create stress and anxiety, therefore the team leader will be in charge of ensuring proper deliveries from all parties accomplished in a timely fashion, thus allowing us more freedom in regards to last minute ideas or other projects.

b. Monitor team meetings: Here again, the leader will ensure proper communication and cohesion between team members, ensuring that each of us will be heard and that every single opinion will be valued. Besides, the team leader will make sure that no one will be missing the team meetings

c. Establish a project-based framework: Depending on the task/project, different members may have different skills that may be more or less useful to the accomplishment of the project. The team leader will make sure to establish a proper work framework, attributing the right tasks to the right person, while keeping in mind that some team members’ weaknesses could be improved through the collaboration with other team members with better skills.

* How will we manage our meetings & teamwork? How often will we meet? For how long? What will the general objectives be? What will we do prior, during and after each of these meetings?

This will mainly depend on the task and assignments. We have planned to have at least one team meeting before we start the topic, so that everyone is on same page and subsequent meetings in between to manage the progress and a final meeting at the end before the deliverable.

a. The leaders for the individual assignments will be free to allocate a schedule accordingly to allocate the work. However, we have planned to have at least once a week in general.

b. The team meetings will not be long enough to exhaust the members, to resolve this issue we have decided to do our homework before every meeting and prepare individually in advance.

c. Meetings will be scheduled as per the availability of the individual team member. However, the agenda as well as the availability for the meeting in hand will be decided on the meeting before that in order to avoid any confusion among team members.

d. The team leader will be in charge of kick starting the meeting for his/her individual subject. For this he will be required to have done his/her homework correctly before we meet. The leader will allocate the task based on the team discussion and the interest of the individual team member, and going forward monitor the progress.

e. Review meetings to monitor the progress will be held tentatively based on the requirement and progress of the individual assignment.

f. As a team we will always maintain the individual respect for each other and will always thrive to have our coactions aligned with our individual thoughts.

* What team values and rules of behavior will regulate our work together? –

We commit to make a treasure of our diversity and to preserve it through democratic processes and positive criticism in our decision-making, having always our collective and individual growth opportunity in mind. We will make every reasonable effort to deliver our specific tasks in time and with the best accuracy and completeness we can. Decision will be made by the team as a whole and once a decision has been made by the team, we promise to follow through it loyally and implement it in time.

We will act upon the following principles:

1. Mutual Trust: We will create an environment of mutual trust and commitment as a fertile basis for our cooperation towards our goals – personal and as a team. 2. Empowering: We will work towards excellence and accomplishment of our objectives in a way that is inclusive and empowering for every team member and the team as a whole. 3. Understanding: We will be open to each other and we commit to recognize the strength and weaknesses of each team member without judgement 4. Unity: We will share our expertise and resources with each other, we will stand united and motivate each other

* How will we monitor our progress?
We will monitor our progress by utilizing digital tools, holding group meetings and by analyzing professor's feedback from completed assignments. For digital tools we will use One Drive, WhatsApp and email.

1. One Drive will allow all of the members to have access to projects in progress and completed projects via cloud store space. Plus, all of the members will be able to edit documents online with instant sharing with the whole team function.

2) WhatsApp chat will allow all of the members to send instant notifications, updates, concerns and suggestions regarding projects' progress and overall team work.

3) Email will allow team members to communicate with each other regarding project progress and to send important documents to all of the team members.

Group meetings will allow group members to discuss project at hand, allocate tasks to individual members, update team mates on individual member's progress with assigned tasks and teach other members what one has done, why and how relating to an assigned task.
Lastly, analyzing professor's feedback after each completed project is extremely important. This will help the team to analyze the weak points and improve on them for other assignments. Furthermore, this will show team members the strong points and approaches which the group can enhance for following assignments and deliver an even better performance.

* How will we deal with any breakdowns? The team will operate in an environment where everyone feels included and his or her ideas are heard and understood. In case of dissent, the discussion should be dealt with collectively and in the open with all the team members present. In case an agreement is not possible, we will strive to find a compromise that is meaningful to our goals and that preserves the point of views of the team members as much as possible. However, in any case the Team's interest must come first.

In case of divergence of opinions regarding technical problems, the opinion of the team member who has the most relevant work or academic experience in the field will prevail, unless he or she is proven wrong. In any case, we accept that once an assignment is submitted, the team is responsible for it as a whole.

a. Action : i. Team members will be encouraged not to hide their mistakes and bring them to the attention of the rest of the group, so as to make the situation a learning one for everyone.

ii. A team member should have a valid reason for skipping or coming late for the team meeting, If a team member has no show or late for the team meeting for twice, he/she should buy coffee for every team members.If this is repeated more than two time he/she should treat us all a fancy dinner.

iii. In the case any serious ethical issue, we as a team resolve to keep the issue within the group and handle implications and consequences accordingly and in a democratic fashion. We see commitment in knowing that every individual will strive for personal integrity; knowing that the fate of the group is dependent upon the personal integrity of each individual member ensures to a great degree that unethical problems will be avoided from the outset.

* Any other issues for consideration?

Work/life balance: We will ensure a healthy balance between group work and individual time by ensuring that we maintain efficiency while we meet. We can do this by substituting meeting in assigned areas by meetings held through Skype once the project has a direction and everyone is aligned regarding their work objectives.