Collaboration &TeamWork

Collaboration is the process where two or more entities work together to achieve a common goal. For example, suppose Vodafone wants to develop an application. To make an application live, it must pass three most important stages, i.e. Development, Testing, Production. So, lets assume company A took the responsibility for developing the code, company B took the testing responsibility and company C took the Production responsibility. As all the three organizations are working towards the same goal but play different roles, we can say this is a collaborative effort. Now each organization will have small units known as Teams. Each team will have their own share of responsibility. For example, Testing team has sub divisions, like, some do smoke testing, while some do Integration Testing etc. All the people doing smoke testing for this project are known as smoke testing team and this is known as Team Work. Basically, all the people doing the same work to achieve a goal is known as Team Work. Team Work is an instantiation of collaboration. Coordination and cooperation are one of the most important aspect to make collaboration work. In the above example, suppose testing team is getting some bug while testing the code, they can ask development team of company A to sort it out. This is coordination. Suppose within testing team some people are facing problems, they can help each other. This is cooperation. Lack of coordination, low trust, Individual agendas, competition among each other (individuals or organizations) can also cause collaborative failure.

Scavenger hunt is a Collaboration exercise, basically, working together. I believe I can be a leader/captain in this game, because I can influence others to agree upon a plan and coordinate efforts to achieve the goal.