To Team or Not to Team

 

I have always considered myself to be more of an introvert than an extrovert. I usually keep to myself and I am not too socially outgoing. I tend to work alone, but sometimes I benefit from other people’s thoughts and ideas. After looking at someone else’s social media and participating in the “Lost at Sea” activity, what I found solidified my initial decision to work alone on the title sequence, but also showed me some of the positives of collaborating with someone else too.

When I studied Gannon’s Instagram page, I noticed how much he values the people in his life. He has plenty of posts in which he expresses his appreciation and gratitude towards his girlfriend, as well as his friends in which he consistently comments about them and how much they mean to him. According to the article “The Effect of Team Personality on Team Performance” by John Bradley and Frederick Hebert, “Personality types have an essential role for the success of IS development team performance”. Gannon’s personality type would be a good match for a team as connecting and understanding others is important for the success of the team. His page told me that he is a likable person who appreciates the people around him and that he is more of an extrovert; however, I am not a very social person as I usually keep to myself and prefer to be alone more than being with others.

When we did the “Lost at Sea” activity, I began my prioritization of the items listed by envisioning myself in that survival situation. I let my instincts guide me through the decision making. I started with the items that I physically couldn’t live without, like drinking water and the Army rations. Then I thought about protection, like the opaque plastic sheet to block the sun. Then I thought about communication like the mirror and the oil. My choices turned out to be decent, but not perfect according to the Coast Guard’s choices. Then when we grouped up to complete the same list, my decisions from before changed a bit due to situations I didn’t think of on my own, but most of my choices had an impact on the group's choices. In the end, our team’s score was slightly higher than my choices, meaning that my own choices were closer to matching the Coast Guard’s. In the article by Eli Becker, Bruce Leamon states that “…you can have the smartest people, but if they're not playing together, it's never going to get you ahead.” In this case, I felt that we were split at times when deciding the order of the items, and I feel that if I worked with someone else on my project, we wouldn’t work as effectively.

I felt in the beginning that I would do the portfolio project alone, since my title sequence will reflect my ideas and feelings rather than the ideas and thoughts of me and someone else too, and I still feel that way even more now.