SELF-REFLECTION PAPER        Lui Ho Yin 51195935

1.         Virtual Collaboration Project:

This is my first time working on a project virtually with another team. This kind of project is entirely different from what we usually did in the past. Here, I have concluded three major learning points I found during this virtual collaboration project:

1.          Advanced level writing skills

2.          Analytical Negotiation skills

3.          Virtual Motivation skills

2.         Learning Point 1 – Advanced Writing Skills:

Since the two project teams cannot meet up face to face regularly, very often we have to communicate by email or instant messengers. Therefore, we have to write precisely and clearly so as to make sure the readers could get my messages as much as possible.

I remember at the beginning of our virtual collaboration, we had extensive communication by writing bulky emails. Tons of emails and whatapps messages were sent back and forth but we figured out the communication was not very effective. We couldn’t fully understand their ideas while they couldn’t understand our points either.

In order to fix the problems, I amended my writing style. I tried to be as precise as possible by:

Ø   Using thesis statement on each email. Make sure the readers know clearly the objective and purpose of your email. State this at the very first beginning at the email and manage the readers’ expectation.

Ø   Using point form and structuralize my statement. Avoid bulky sentences. Use point form for readers to understand your idea. Be very precise and focused for each sentence.

Ø   Using table to present and compare idea. Words sometime are difficult to compare ideas. By using table, you can structuralize the ideas into different layers and make the words more meaningful.

The whole idea is to make my communication as precise as possible. I would like every reader to grab the objective of my email at the first sight. By doing so, I found that our communication was a lot more effective. We reached mutual idea quickly and was able to kick start the work quickly.

Learning Point 2 – Analytical and Negotiation Skills

During the discussion, we had different view on the project ideas on the virtual collaboration. We were stuck with our own ideas and failed to reach a mutual consensus for two weeks. In order to resolve this situation, I applied the following methods and requested both teammates to complete the following analysis:

Ø   Identify the strengths and weaknesses of both collaborators. Before everything, we must first understand the two collaborators. What are their strengths and weaknesses? What are their unique areas? These are served as the basis for our further analysis.

Ø   Identify how the collaborators contribute to the platform. After understanding the collaborators and coming up with an idea, we then need to assess how precisely they can contribute to the platform. By doing so, we can assess if the platform idea is strong and convincing enough for implementation.

Ø   Assess whether the service can be outsourced. For a virtual collaboration platform, a win-win situation must be achieved. The most effective way to determine this is to assess whether the service each collaborator contributes can be outsourced.

Ø   Identify concrete benefits for each collaborator. Pave clearly how each collaborator can receive concrete benefits, either monetary or non-monetary from the platform.

	Proposal 1
Parties	Forum	Hotel (Cheap Hotel)
Unique Strengths	Connection with many backpackers who are looking for cheap place to stay	Provision of room in a wide range of areas and regions
Weakness	Difficulty to turn netizen to customer and capitalize profit	Costly to promote and fill room vacant due to its scale
How to Contribute to the Platform	Provision of matching opportunities for the large group of netizen	Provision of room and customer authenticity check
Can the above Service be Outsourced?	NO. Easy to develop a website/platform but hard to have such large scale of potential customers (i.e. backpacker)	NO. Not many hotels have such a wide range of region coverage.
How to Benefit from the Platform	Capatlize profit from netizen (e.g. share of profit/ commission)	Boost room reservation and resolve vacancy problem

Learning Point 3 – Virtual Motivation Skills

Although the project teams could not meet face to face, motivation is still important. Without a motivated team with aligned vision, the virtual collaboration would definitely collapse.

During the virtual collaboration project, our conversation was primarily words, which was dull, cold and boring. In order to make our conversation more exciting and interesting, we made use of the functions of instant messengers and tried to make use of the emotional symbols. By doing so, we found the collaboration was a lot more harmonic and cheerful.

BEFORE                                                                     AFTER