On Teamwork

Group projects are inherently difficult. Many different people working on the same thing, with different skill levels, backgrounds, schedules, etc. It is hard. Often there is this idea that everyone must do an equal share of the load. I think that idea is silly and completely non-realistic. I have been on many group projects, in academia and otherwise, and I have never experienced people equally sharing the load. However, this does not upset me, rather I think it is the only group projects can in reality function.

When you start a group project, some people are going to have a higher skill level in the various areas of interest. This is natural, and even good. The best thing to do is then to divide those people up, based on their skills, and have each person work where he can do the most effective job. However, you will inevitably end up with multiple people working on the same task, with different skill levels. Expecting the less skilled person to do more or equal to than the more skilled person is insanity. Why would anyone expect that outcome? But if one is to take issue with this, then you will find yourself always dissatisfied with group performance. Rather, the metric by which you should be evaluating your compatriots should be their ability to perform the tasks they say they can, in the time frame they give. Perhaps you could have done it twice as fast, but that is not an issue as long as you are still working on other tasks than more work is still being done. The less skilled person, by performing the task becomes more skilled in the process, which helps the group as a whole.

To be more concrete, our project revolves heavily around web application architecture. This is an area that I am very familiar with, so I have more skill and understanding in the are than some of my teammates. As such, I have performed more work than some of my teammates. But I in no way feel that this means that they did not carry their share of the load. They did want they could, when they said they would, and I have been very satisfied. If our project had been focused on a different technology, say robotics, I would likely have been doing the least quantities of work rather than possibly the most, just because others would have had a better background in that area.