I know none of the details of the Catalyst project--I'm not even sure I know what it is exactly--and none of the details of the problems.

I do know that every team needs a leader. Every idea a progenitor. If you don't like the idea, you don't join the team. If you disagree with the leader and their ideas, you don't gang up to remove the leader, you go off and follow your own notions.

I'm an inveterate non-joiner for exactly those reasons. I'd rather influence (or not), through reason from the outside, than inveigle my way onto a project and then stage a coup--bloodless or otherwise.

I'm also an inveterate private projecteer, because I prefer to follow my own ideas to fruition or failure. It takes longer and may never complete, but it's a lot less frustrating than having to justify your decisions to other, johnny-come-latelys.

Very few technical debates have clear cut black & white answers. They nearly always involve trade-offs and priorities and value-judgements about those. In a volunteer project, IMO, the progenitor gets the casting vote--even against the numerical weight of opinion. Those who cannot live with the progenitors decision have the option of forking the project or starting their own.

In the commercial environment, you do what the man-who-pays, tells you to do.

In a volunteer project, you do it for your own reasons, your own motives and your own passions. Once a project ceases to be something you look forward to doing, and becomes something you start avoiding, you best drop it and move on. The quickest way for a passion to become a burden, is for you to loose heart in it's direction. And the quickest way for that to happen when you are the progenitor of a project, is when you loose control of the direction and goals of your ideas and efforts.

Does any of this relate to the Catalyst project? I have no idea.

But the team is an entity in addition to its individuals.

That statement only means you don't understand the parts well enough.

There is only the parts. There is no 'addition'. The team consists of it's individuals. Period. I don't hold with this pseudo spiritualist malarky.

There is only the parts. There is no 'addition'. The team consists of it's individuals. Period. I don't hold with this pseudo spiritualist malarky.

I disagree... a team is only as good as they function together.

You can lay all the pieces of a watch on a table, and all you have is the *potential* for a watch... Put them together, and you get a watch... There's nothing different about the pieces, but the way they are joined together for a purpose makes them 'more' than they are just being near each other.

The same is true of people... You can take four people and put them together and *call* them a team, but there's still four people... and they might make useful stuff

But take the same four people, and let them bond and *really* become a team, and you'll see amazing things from them.

All I'm saying is that there's a difference in 'a bunch of parts' and 'a bunch of parts put together for a common purpose'.

That's the meaning of 'the whole'... The 'whole' is the purpose that joins the parts... that's what makes it more.

Trek

It's the characteristics and behaviors of the parts that make up that whole, though. A whole is only the sum of its parts if you consider that assembling the whole to form a cohesive team involves redefining the parts. A team learning to work well together doesn't require some magical addition of aggregate entity mojo (pun intended) -- just that the individuals on the team grow and change so that they work well with the other individuals.

print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);

- apotheon CopyWrite Chad Perrin

Individuals don't win football games. The piece you're missing is trust. The quarterback trusts his linemen to do their job so that he can do his. Each lineman trusts the guy next to him. The linebackers trust the D-linemen to do their jobs correctly.

Or, if you want non-American football, the goalkeep trusts the defense. The midfielders trust that when they kick the ball up in a leading pass that the striker will know what's happening and be there.

Or, do you feel that, as an individual, you can win a soccer game on your own?

---

My criteria for good software:

1. Does it work?
2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?

An individual doesn't win the football game: the collection of individuals does. Every individual plays a part in the win or loss of a game. Replacing some of those individuals with other individuals can alter the likelihood of a win pretty drastically. "Teamwork" is the doings of people in the particular, not in the aggregate. People have to work at it (thus the name) as individuals.

There is no centralized entity. I have experience of being part of a team in one of the most team-oriented circumstances in this life -- combat infantry. When you have a fireteam in combat, you should try telling any of the soldiers in that fireteam that the team itself is the important entity, and the individuals cease to be discrete, separate entities themselves, for purposes of "winning". Try telling that to the members of a Ranger fireteam, for instace, whose first rule of combat is that one never leaves a fallen comrade behind.

I don't mean to create some kind of "patrioticker than thou" argument here. I'm just raising the stakes of the team beyond that of a football team, because when lives are at stake the pseudophilosophical pop psychology goes out the window and people start recognizing the nit and grit of what's going on. Sure, a soldier may give his life, but he doesn't do so "for the team". He does it for an ideal and/or for the guy next to him. It doesn't get any more individual than that.

I think I'm more inclined to agree with wfsp's characterization of a team than yours, I'm afraid.

Yes, individuals win (American) football games, as long as you have eleven of them on the field at a time.

print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);

- apotheon CopyWrite Chad Perrin

This is a matter of opinion only, not anything that can be demonstrated. Statements such as "the whole is greater than its parts" or its converse are simply statements of faith or opinion; they are axions.

Also, "spiritualist" refers to a belief that one can communicate with the dead. It has little to do with Aristotlean assertions.