The managers on our project have declared that we can work from separate locations once our team has been established to work well together. I am starting to get the feeling that this is not going to happen any time soon. And this concerns me. Because until we meet this objective, we must all work out of a crowded lab at the customer site where there is little parking. That is no fun at all.The most recent episode that tells me we have little to no teamwork built up is as follows. One developer got tired of teaming up to port an application to Visual C++ 2005 and the Oracle 10g client. So he proposed that he take over the whole applications. He guaranteed that the work would be completed to meet the schedule. However he required the ability to make all technical decisions to get the job done. Furthermore he required the ability to work off site so he would not have to be bothered by the distractions from the rest of the team.
Part of me liked the bold proposal from my coworker. There is always a lot of overhead when you try to get more than one developer to work on a single code base. And I know this guy. He can probably get the job done very efficiently. However this plan in and of itself is direct proof that we are not working well together as a team. It is just the opposite. I am going to let our team lead, our development manager, and the rest of senior management to figure out what to do. In the end I want to be released from the poor working environment, and be free to work from a real office.
