Lots To Learn About Teamwork

A very warm welcome to all the people who recently signed up to follow Storypot. Thank you so much for choosing to follow my life and writing adventures. And to Sara Jane, I hope some of what I write about here does resonate with you and helps you to jumpstart your writing career. And when you do have a blog, let me know so I can check it out?

Sandu, thanks for following me too. Sorry I don't read Spanish, but I like the looks of your blog. I did wonder if you were planning to blog the World Cup Soccer?

And with the welcomes out of the way, in terms of writing news, the new project in my schedule (until March 2010, we think) is to do media liaison and publicity about Team Software Process for a client. [I did mention that I'm a former tech/telecoms journo:-)]

If you're wondering what in heaven's TSP is, the short explanation is that teams that develop software can use the TSP establish goals, define team roles, assess the risks their project faces and produce a team plan.

I'm sure by the end of the year you'll have sucked in more details about it by osmosis. But don't worry, I'll keep it light and say it in English:-)

What it does boil down to for me is that "TEAMWORK" seems to be becoming an integral element of my writing life:

• Couples working as a team on their marriage and communities and countries working as a team to reduce HIV infection in the region [the OneLove regional campaign]
• Forming, training and managing volunteer community development teams [as in the five volunteer teams who's adventures watching every week on Kwanda on SABC1] and
• Software engineering teams at a bank.
  

The big irony for me, is that I've never been quite sure that I work well in teams. You don't become a journalist so you can share your leads and sources with competing journalists/media, and you certainly don't choose to be a work-at-home writer because you do your best work within a team:-). So lots of lessons to absorb in the coming months.

Question: Do you do your best work in a team or alone? And if you do your best work alone, why would you still need to understand how teams work and be a good team player?