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.

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

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?

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

When I speak of "trust", I'm speaking of the connections formed between the units. Returning to the futbol analogy, you have a midfielder and his striker, let's say on the left side. The two players work together as one entity, each knowing what the other will do, how they'll do it, and when. They are synchronized into working as a two-part unit.

You can see that this is the important facet of the team vs. the individual by looking at a Ranger fireteam. When one member charges or flanks or whatever else it is that they do, they do so knowing that every other member of the team is in sync with their movements. They move as one unit. It's not coincedence that the military uses the term "unit" as the name for the smallest group of soldiers. Those soldiers are supposed to work together in such a way that it seems like there is one brain controlling 6 bodies. They are, in theory, supposed to be able to anticipate each others' moves and do things that six individuals wouldn't be able to do.

I was calling that trust, and trust is the key to it, but I should have used the word synchronization. Between 6 people, there are hundreds of connections that are formed, both between the individuals as well as between the groups the individuals form. When a fireteam splits into pairs or a pair and a group of four, each group knows how the other group(s) will act, how they'll act, and when they'll act.

While I'm not suggesting that the degree of cooperation in a Ranger fireteam should be the model for a OSS development team, I am suggesting that we could learn a lot about the kind of cooperation that's necessary to truly accomplish something in a cooperative fashion.

---

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?

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.