Keys for success when working in a team

               I think that when working with a team or within a team, it is really important, first of all is to respect each other. Mutual respect among the team member can solve and prevent a lot of issues even before they arise. In the Hands on Hearts team, we manage to accomplish this mutual respect from the first meeting we had, among us the developers and with Dana, out client.

               Regarding the red lines, in my experience in working with teams and within a team, the red line is usually related to the level of knowledge a person has and they are usually being pretty sensitive about somebody else’s criticizing them. For example, if my teammates are expert in C language, and I know Python and C also, but not very well, I would not go and start telling them that this approach was wrong or they should have used different style of code. Also, another red line that I think that should not be crossed is that every person idea is a good idea. It would be disrespectful if one team member will suggest an idea, and another team member will come up and say that this idea is no good, that can create a situation where people from the group will start to feel uncomfortable to suggest ideas, and maybe one of those ideas that they wanted to bring up but were too afraid to, will actually solve a major bug or a defect.

               The key to success of leading without being a leader is to just come up with original ideas and to know how to present them in a way the whole team will agree and understand. So far, in the Hands on Hearts team, I think that Frank has stepped up and in the last two sprints, he has been leading us with giving good ideas on how to proceed and a good interaction with Dana. It seems like she understands him and he understands exactly what she wants, which is really helpful, and also is helping us in the development process.

               One way to do the job done without one person doing the job for everyone is to create specific tasks that every member of the team agrees with. If the tasks will get distributed among the team members, but one member is not feeling comfortable with his task for any reason, he won’t do it, and he will create a situation where somebody else in the team will have to do this task. So the key here, is to make sure that every team member gets a task that he or she is the most comfortable with.