is this really something for teamwork?

When you begin to work in an agile way, you work much more in a team than before. Things you did alone before are now done in a team, and you rely on each other to get things done. While I find teamwork something very helpful in 80% of all cases, in some cases I can not help to think - before we start working in a cycle - "well, is this now really something for teamwork? Wouldn't it be easier if someone sat down and just figured this out?"

Today I had such a moment again. We were asked by todays product champ to come up with a system that would allow all people working for the company to sell our products and to make it in a way that would be transparent and corresponding to the agile principles (so, for instance, to make it in a way that would allow different people to work on the same client account and sharing responsibility).

My immediate response was: "Well, I know a lot about sales and about systems, so shouldn't I just sit down and write the concept?" But the other team members convinced me that it was a good thing to do this task as a team and so we started deciding on the best way to do this.

The other team members started by brainstorming on all the questions they might have about selling our products, while I came up with a basic suggestion of the structure and system. Then, we swapped the results, and the team members started to improve my system (they actually changed it completely, which was totally beneficial to the result :-) ) and I started taking their questions and formulating "how to's" and checklists to answer all the questions.

After only half a day we had a basic system in place with all the manual and checklists to go with it. In the afternon we then started testing our system together and improved it a great deal  over the course of the next three hours.

At 4.15 we had a review with our product champ and presented him the results. At 5, we all went home, feeling a great sense of accomplishment. Wow. I am starting to become a true believer in teamwork (needless to say, I am already a fervent advocate for agile).