PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE AND COLLABORATION

PRACTICING COLLABORATION IN THE LAB You can practice these skills even while working alone. After finishing a lab stage, write a one-page design note as if for a teammate, listing what you built, why, and what you would change next. Then exchange notes with another learner if you can, and review each other's work using the questions in this chapter. Ask your partner what they could not understand, and treat their confusion as a defect in your writing rather than in their reading. GIVING A CLEAR STATUS UPDATE A good update has three parts: what is done, what is next, and what is blocking progress. Keep it short and specific, and give numbers where you have them. For example, "The evaluation set now has forty cases, thirty-eight pass, and the two failures involve scanned files; next I will add a text-extraction step, and I need access to the sample scans." Updates like this help others plan their own work and help you notice when you are stuck. RESPECTING OTHER PEOPLE'S TIME Ask questions in writing with enough detail for someone to answer without a meeting: what you tried, what you expected, and what happened. Share the trace or log, not just a description. Thank people who help, and share what you learn from their answers with the wider team.