Summer Internship Series: Week 8

There’s no “I” in Team

Bobby Bayer

The phrase “There’s no I in Team” is a clear description of the working environment at MRI. Every second since I have been here I have not thought of myself as working alone or without having anyone to help me when needed. Even when I found myself working alone I always knew that what I was working on would not just affect me, but all the other employees working on the project as well. When I would think of only me working on a problem I would soon realize again that I’m not the only one working on it. I will see my other teammates fighting the same problem and know that whoever figures it out, if by me or them, once the answer was found we would will help the other person rather than let them flounder on their own. In the product development office I believe this statement is strongly emphasized by the open floor concept. There are no walls in PD separating one team from another or one employee from another. This, I believe, leads to a strong team atmosphere and allows all employees to work closely and cooperatively to get the best results. What I have learned in the past eight weeks here at MRI has been that the whole company works as a whole. They strongly encourage an open communi8cation and teamwork. They allow one to work on their own if there capable but do not wish them to struggle on their own. They would wish for them to reach out and get help and work together.

Emily Mracek

MRI Software is a prime example of the phrase “there is no ‘I’ in team”.  When first stepping into the building, you can see the structure of the way each department is set up and the open floor plan.  The building is all one floor, and the departments are dispersed throughout the building with many people sitting in cubes with a common area in between them.  This allows for impromptu meetings, areas to work on team projects, and it makes you feel like you aren’t secluded from the rest of your team, or the company for that matter.  In the product development department, everyone sits at long tables surrounded by whiteboards.  I think this is a very innovative idea that allows the developers to collaborate with one another and quickly share thoughts and ideas they may have.

Patrick Ghilani, MRI Software’s CEO, is another key reason as to why MRI is a perfect example of the benefit that working as a team has to offer.  He always emphasizes teamwork, and makes it a point to encourage others to work together.  During our orientation week, he gave a speech and made an extremely valid point that has stuck with me throughout my time at MRI.  He stated that many think that the pilot is the most important person when it comes to flying a plane, but that is actually not the case.  What if the people who built the plane didn’t bolt the door on correctly?  What if the stewardess didn’t perform proper protocol before the plane took off?  Looking at the bigger picture, anyone who has/had anything to do with that particular plane were equally important.  The same goes for MRI.  Each department has their own element that they contribute to the growth of the company.  Without this, MRI would not be as successful as it is today.

James Hahn

This internship has made me value the phrase “There’s no I in team” dearly.  As an intern in the product development department, I’m forced to work in a team every day and it continuously helps me with my team communication and collaboration skills.

For example, every day, my fellow PD interns and I have a standup in the morning.  At this standup, everybody details what they’re working on, with who, and how much progress they’ve made.  This helps me because if we’re working on an important project or large feature of another project and we’re not where we should be, people can pair up and tackle a problem twice as fast.

Every Friday, we have a code review.  This is basically a 3 hour long meeting where we are able to see all of contributions people have made to the projects we’ve been working on.  It’s great because of several reasons.  One, we can keep tabs on each other and see which projects each person has been focused on recently, just in case we need to move people from a less important task to a more significant one.  Also, we can provide constructive criticism to our peers about coding practices they can improve on.

In our everyday ritual, we also strongly display the “no I in team” motto.  Since we have 10 interns working on 3 projects sometimes, grouping up for a project or task promotes teamwork and collaboration.  If we didn’t work as a team, we would be a mess.  There is so much to manage, that we need to be effective at communication and making sure everything is clear to all team members, particularly about which tasks are most important and which tasks are giving people trouble and you could help with.

And in the grand scheme of things, MRI is no stranger to “There’s no I in team.”  From my short time here, I’ve seen that everybody is part of one big team.  No matter which department you belong to, it takes cooperation and hard work between departments to push the company past its limits.  Legal works in conjunction with SaaS to make sure servers and data are accessed and stored securely and lawfully in different countries and Product Management works with Product Development to make sure requirements are clear and customers receive high quality products.

As my journey at MRI comes to an end, I have learned a valuable lesson, “there’s no I in team.”  From the small family of interns that I convene with daily to the larger MRI family, it’s been fantastic collaborating on tasks, ideas, and opinions.  Although there may not be an I in team, there certainly is an I in #MRInterns.

Matt Mellinger

My experience as an intern at MRI this summer has greatly reinforced the concept that there’s no “I” in team. After witnessing and being a part of the daily operations of MRI, I now realize that every member of the pride depends on each other to fulfill their own individual roles and responsibilities.

This concept is very easy to notice when working with smaller more specialized teams in part because, each team member has specific tasks delegated to them that they can individually be held accountable for. Often times, one team member must complete their tasks in a timely manner with precision to enable the next team member the ability to fulfill their assigned obligations. If I am slacking and not putting forth maximum effort the entire team’s performance will be negatively affected. While I may be reprimanded by my boss and the other team members on a micro level, the entire organization can be reprimanded on a macro level. The macro effect may be felt abstractly through decreased customer trust and lower public perception as a result of one person’s self-serving behavior and poor work output.

An individual’s selfish actions can cause a ripple effect that transcends their department specific team. If a software engineer writes sub-standard code, other departments such as sales and support will have to spend their valuable time regaining the customers’ trust and troubleshooting their problems. Then if the actions of the sales and support teams are primarily reactive with their resources allocated towards solving avoidable problems, they will struggle to identify and provide product management with intelligence that could aid in the ascension of our products to new heights. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that every person and department works with an “us” attitude rather than an “I” mentality.

The cohesive teamwork that I have witnessed this summer has reinforced and brought me a greater understanding of the concept that there’s no “I” in team. I now realize that all team members working together towards a common goal leads to much greater success than a team consisting of self-serving members working for their own personal gain or other selfish reasons. This is an important life lesson that should be implemented by everyone throughout all aspects of life. If all members of the human team worked together with an emphasis on each other, the world would perhaps be in a state of peace with even greater possibilities for everyone.

Caleb Kupetz

If there is only one thing that I can say with absolute certainty I have come out of this internship with, it is the importance of a team unit in a working environment.   For starters, our daily stand-up meetings as a team of PD interns helped to bring us together in a very casual sense. Beyond that, having a team of 9 other interns, at least for Product Development, was very helpful because it allowed us to have people to both check with and work beside for the various projects we were assigned to complete.  Beyond that, one other intern joined me in working on automation throughout the summer, and having someone else to complete the new concepts with was invaluable from a programming perspective.  Having another person to troubleshoot with that is at the same level was absolutely vital to my experience here.   Working alone definitely had its place at various points in the last 9 weeks, but the constant interaction between the team of interns is, without a doubt, what made the experience complete.  The importance of teams is something that I have gained from this short time at MRI, and it is certainly something I will value for the rest of my professional career. If there is only one thing that I can say with absolute certainty I have come out of this internship with, it is the importance of a team unit in a working environment.   For starters, our daily stand-up meetings as a team of PD interns helped to bring us together in a very casual sense. Beyond that, having a team of 9 other interns, at least for Product Development, was very helpful because it allowed us to have people to both check with and work beside for the various projects we were assigned to complete.  Beyond that, one other intern joined me in working on automation throughout the summer, and having someone else to complete the new concepts with was invaluable from a programming perspective.  Having another person to troubleshoot with that is at the same level was absolutely vital to my experience here.   Working alone definitely had its place at various points in the last 9 weeks, but the constant interaction between the team of interns is, without a doubt, what made the experience complete.  The importance of teams is something that I have gained from this short time at MRI, and it is certainly something I will value for the rest of my professional career.