That Perfect Team

Many of us have been on that “perfect” team at some point in our lives. You know, the one where everyone’s personalities meshed just right and each person’s strengths were exactly what was needed to get that project done. If you had another chance to work on a project with that team, you know it would be successful.

Starting a team project is similar to integrating multiple different software programs together. Each program is designed for a particular purpose and it does it well. One can rely on an individual program to provide it’s designed value. The thought of integrating it with other programs instantly brings up questions. Is it possible? Will it be reliable? Will integrating them provide the intended result?

The confidence that the integration can be successful begins with a simple test where one small piece of one of the programs can successfully “talk” to another program with a common language. The confidence that the objective will be successful grows as additional parts of the systems are progressively more connected.

People are like those individual programs. Initially there may be apprehension of how well they will work together, but after experiencing sometimes even the smallest group interaction, the team’s confidence can skyrocket and lead to immediate productivity.

Whether it is teamwork or software integration, the result has the potential to be orders of magnitude more valuable when working together rather than individually.

illustration credit: Scooby1980 / CC BY 2.0