To Team or Not to Team

 I have decided to work on my AICE portfolio with Spencer Ballard. When I was taking notes on his Instagram account, I can gather that he has a lot of friends, is a swimmer, and has a girlfriend. He doesn’t have a color theme on his account, so I think he posts to pictures as he takes them, unlike my account, where I like to have a color scheme that matches the other photos. When we worked together in the “Lost at Sea” team-building activity, it seemed as if our brains worked better together because we were closer to the actual answers, unlike when I was alone. We both had our own opinions on the topic given to us, however, in the end we both ended up agreeing on one thing, whether it was meeting in the middle, or one of us ended up figuring out why we were incorrect. 

I have known Spencer Ballard since I was a freshman, and we have been close friends ever since. I was introduced to him in my Pre-AICE English class since we were seat partners, and our brains just clicked. Our humor is very similar, so that is usually something we discuss, along with our thoughts/opinions. From the blog, The effect of personality type on team performance, authors John H. Bradley and Fredric J. Herbert state that “Ineffective teams may be the product of inappropriate team composition.” I believe that Spencer Ballard and I are both effective workers, so when we work together, we will work with twice the effectiveness. Of course, however, we will both have our individual downfalls. 

Since Spencer is working at home, this could be a minor setback because we cannot talk together in person, but since there is Facetime and other ways to video chat, this shouldn’t be too much of a problem. We can also create a shared document and both work on it individually and only talk together whenever we absolutely have to. Another drawback is that we both can get distracted very easily. This has never proved to be a real issue in the past, but it is always something to stay aware of. A final problem to be aware of is with leadership. With two people, there is no real “leader”. It would only end up as one person doing the work and the other person slacking off. Looping back to the article, Herbert and Bradley state that “Effective leadership is an especially important factor in the success of an IS development team.” The only reason to be worried about the project having a leader is that it could end up as the other person not doing any work.  From the article, Team building and group dynamics: creating and fostering a culture of teamwork requires trust, collaboration, and accountability, written by Eli Becker, it is stated that team relationships increased when it comes to what they do and the impact of it. I think our relationship of being friends could get in the way a bit because of how well we get along, we aren’t afraid to speak out minds when in the presence of one another, so one little argument could end up not ending too well.