Day 16: Boundaries and Informal Leadership

        The workflow is established, and everyone knows what they are doing. In the morning I was invited into Sandesh's and Imma's room to introduce them to Jupyter Notebooks. It was pretty easy to know what to say and which features of the tool to stress since I spent some time yesterday with Sama and Roberto doing the same exact thing. Rebekah joined the session as well since she wanted to know more about the tools. I really enjoy explaining data science tools and breaking down concepts to others when working in a team. 

        I spent some time afterward in a meeting with Dr. Boggs, where we discussed the changes for Chapter 8 and her upcoming contribution to the book. It is important that we know what we are expecting in terms of contributions as we need to know what is going to be later added to the chapters before the pair-programmers make their own changes. To be frank, I left the meeting very confused. Originally, we were all told that the pair-programmers will not be writing any of the content because it is not their expertise. Instead, we were told they will be focusing on resolving issues that are technical and done via code. Now, the pair programmers are mainly writing all of the material with the exception of introductions, which Dr. Boggs will include later. I think we were all left in the dark about the contributions we will be making to the actual content. This is a great responsibility, and I am very proud to be doing such meaningful work. My only concern is that we were sort of led to this responsibility, rather than told upfront about the type of work we will be doing.

        After the meeting with Dr. Boggs, I created more issues on GitHub and Trello. I am happy that I now know more about using the Lean Development process using these tools. I spent the rest of the day meeting with the pair programmers to help them with their needs. Though I am not a formal leader in this environment, I am the only person who has read the majority of the book and has done most of the exercises. Thus, the programmers tend to ask me questions in regards to the issues they encounter. I do my best to be helpful and rise to the occasion, though there is little credit for the work since I am not a formal leader. This reminds me of the importance of boundaries and communication. It is important in the future workspaces that I communicate clearly about my contributions to the leader and the group in order to re-setup boundaries. I believe it is helpful for those needing help and those providing resources to understand who is responsible for what.