Reflecting on Our Project Top-n music genre: Successes, Struggles, and Lessons Learned
Working on this project has been a challenging yet rewarding experience for our team. From deciding on foundational project setups to agreeing on data and feature importance, we’ve encountered some valuable lessons in teamwork and adaptability. Here’s a look into some of our key struggles, decisions, and the process we’re using to make progress.
1. Setting Up the Project: Unified vs. Separate Repos
One of our earliest and biggest challenges was deciding how to structure our code repositories. Some team members preferred a single, unified repository, arguing that it would keep everything in one place, making collaboration and dependency management easier. Others argued for separate repositories to keep components modular and reduce the risk of code conflicts. This debate revealed our different approaches to organization and collaboration, and while both sides had strong points, it was difficult to reach a consensus.
In the end, we had to use a team vote to settle this. We decided to keep everything in a single repository for now, with plans to re-evaluate this setup as the project scales. This was a valuable lesson in flexibility and the importance of making decisions that suit the current project stage while staying open to changes down the line.
2. Data Choices and Feature Importance: What Matters Most?
Choosing the right data and deciding which features to prioritize for our model has also been a challenge. Initially, we were excited to dive into the data and start building, but we quickly realized that aligning on which dataset to use and identifying the essential features was more complex than we anticipated. Each team member brought different perspectives on which data points would provide the most predictive power, leading to a lengthy discussion.
After several rounds of debate, we turned to voting again to help settle these decisions. While not everyone agreed with the final choices, the voting process allowed us to move forward. It reminded us of the importance of making decisions collaboratively, even if it means compromising on individual preferences.
3. Plans, Detours, and the Art of Adapting
As we worked through these early stages, we’ve already encountered some unexpected detours. Certain tools we thought would simplify our workflow ended up adding complexity, and some ideas that initially seemed essential became less relevant as we refined our project goals. We’re learning that detours and re-evaluations are a natural part of the process—and that flexibility is key to success.
4. Looking Ahead: Moving Forward with Confidence
Despite these initial struggles, our team is growing more confident in our ability to navigate challenges. We know there will be more decisions to make and more differences of opinion along the way, but the processes we’re building now, like voting on major decisions and establishing clear communication channels, will help us stay aligned.
Our project has already taught us a lot about teamwork, decision-making, and the value of flexibility. We’re excited to see where the next stages take us and to keep learning along the way.
