Have you ever had that gut feeling that things will turn out well because of the people you are working with? Call me optimistic, but the reason I have a good feeling about Pandamian is not only because users are giving us encouraging feedback but also because of the team dynamics.

At the beginning of the development, direction was mainly based on Eli’s word. And that was hard to swallow for the rest of us because our efforts were invested based on a single person’s word, probably harder for Yipeng because he did not know Eli as well as I did (and he was putting in more work as the technical lead). So most of the heated arguments were between Eli and Yipeng regarding feature development priority. We used to have meetings every week where technical terms were being thrown around for a full two hours, which caused  me to be frequently lost (it took me a couple of months to actually figure out that “CMS” meant Content Management System. I felt like Eduardo in The Social Network when he confessed to his girlfriend that he did not know how to change his relationship status on Facebook), just to settle on what features to implement first.

As Pandamian took shape and things began to fall into place, I guess everyone became more comfortable with each other. We learnt how each other worked and trust grew, something that is very important. People were left to carry out their own responsibilities, meetings grew less frequent (not sure if that is bad) but the development progressed pretty smoothly. I guess all those arguments set the stone for something stronger. It created the binding chemistry for the team. We now have an understanding regarding each other’s take on Pandamian and realize that this drives the development to be more wholesome. We argue not because we oppose each other, but because we sees a weakness and think that it can be better implemented. Yes, Eli is still OCD about design, Yipeng still works his magic silently, Ray Chuan adds more technical skills and I still dream of the big bucks. But we all work towards a common goal, creating something that will change the way writers write and, eventually, the way people read.