Product Development Solutions by Keith Taylor

For my colleagues in Software engineering that are interested in Scrum & Agile processes. Scrum is my first love and is what I am focusing on currently in my life and career. I will also share my experiences on how to best deal with Management opportunities, how to best tackle a technical problem in Code or help others best organize all the data that comes at us every day. Most importantly I consider this a place where I will not only share my thoughts, but learn from those that participate.

Friday 6 May 2011

On boarding Scrum and Team Dynamics

Along my Scrum path Team dynamics was explained to me through Tuckman’s stages of group Development. This model of group development has 4 stages:

· Forming

o Individuals meet and learn about goals, opportunities. Little shared knowledge, no trust yet, strong desire for direction.

· Storming

o Conflict and polarization around interpersonal issues, roles, goals, standards and processes.

· Norming

o Team identity and cohesiveness develops, new standards evolve, and the new roles are adopted.

· Performing

o High degree of cooperation and interdependence. Goals are achieved smoothly and effectively with a minimum of conflict.

Bruce Tuckman once said “Hyper-Performing” is “The Sum is greater than the aggregate of the parts”. I believe this boils down best what the team will achieve once they have progressed through the 4 stages.

The below graph visually represents the 4 stages: