The power of the team

As mentioned in my last post among my roles I am, at present, primarily the main developer of the C# client application. I also mentioned that I was transferring to C# and that aside of some small projects in the past, this is my largest and most involved project in the technology.

The problem is that often I am the only developer on this project.

What does that mean? Well  can be a bit more blasé about making minor code changes directly on the trunk/main branch (version number increments and the like), but it also means that when I hit an issue I have nobody to discuss this with. This causes an additional delay in finding an appropriate solution.

Whilst the value of teamwork has always been obvious to me, this situation has bought it home to me on a couple of occasions. Two heads really are better than one.

With others working on a team I often find ideas and experience sharing multiply (at least up to a point). I'm not talking about pair programming (of which I have had only good experiences), but the fact that individuals will have different experience and approaches, and in some situations this proves to be invaluable.

Of course we all need to know how to work on our own (sometimes for extended periods of time, or entire projects), but having others to hand to bounce ideas off and suggest solutions is, I feel invaluable.

Naturally the effectiveness of this depends heavily on the nature of those involved. Those involved in software development are often not the most gregarious or social of people, however even those bordering on extreme autism (as I sometimes encounter in this industry) can turn out to be valuable colleges with the right approach.

Of course, there are also occasions where individuals are just plain obstructive, I just hope these people are quickly identified and moved on to more suitable roles (such as standing in line at the job center).

One other key skill I observed in my very first boss (whom I learned much from that I still use to this day) is not being to proud to learn from those with less experience than yourself. To paraphrase what I remember him once saying to me; "If you suggest fifty things which are just plain wrong, and only one thing that I had never occurred to me, then I'm better off because I have learnt something from you."

Crucially, he also had fifty opportunities to educate me in some way, which certainly happened.

Working alone is great, and sometimes required of desired, but even when this is the case having a team to fall back on is, I feel, invaluable. Nobody knows everything, but most people know something worthwhile... sooner or later.