5 Stages of Team Development - Tuckman's Model (PMP Exams Nuggets)

So it’s all about team development.

Just about a month ago, I joined a new team, but all to my suprise, after a couple of weeks everything seemed like a complete chaos as some team members challenged my way of handling things.
Some were making comments like: “Kindson is now working on his own!”. or something like: “We don’t know what Kindson is doing!“. Some other team members were even reporting others to the Project Manager and some were challenging others openly in team meetings all that. And sure it could be worse. But guess what?

This is a normal part of team development. The team is in the Storming stage. Let me tell you about it

So I went back to review my notes on Tuchman’s Model of team development. This model was first developed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965 and has five stages
We begin our discussion with a few words for Project Managers

Content

You may also want to read the following:

1. Note to Project Managers

If you are a project manager or you aspire to be one, then it is neccessary that you pay attention to the makeup of your team. You need to be especially watchful in situation where your team is a multicultural team and a good number of the team are of similar background. Conflicts could easily escalate in situations like this to the detriment of the project.
So note when the team enters the storming stage and try to make sure that the duration of this stage is as small as possible. At this stage you need to communicate more frequently with your team members and avoid taking sides in time conflicts

2. Forming Stage

This is the initial stage of the team development. This stages commences with the formation of the team and the team members meet for the first time. In this stage the team members learn about the project at heand and also get informed about their various roles and in the project. At this point, there is no much cohesions and team members still have an independend mindset.

3. Storming Stage

In this phage, the team members start to step into the actual project work. Since team members begin to work together for the first time, there would be different ideas and divergence of opinions. Sometime, this is the stage where the project experience the highest occurence of inter-team-member conflicts. The project manager need to proactively and carefully manage this stage through good communication and other ways. Otherwise the main project progress may get stalled.

4. Norming Stage

This stage is like an exit from the Storming stage as team members begin to accept one anothers and adopt a more cohesive approach to work. Team members adjust personal behaviours to support the team and mutual respect and trust is built among team members.

5. Performing Stage

This is the like the zenith stage of the team. At this poin the team becomes interdependent and productivity and progress in the project attains a very high level. The project work moves smoothly and effectively as tasks are completed.

6. Adjourning Stage

In this phase the team more or less completes the work of the project and moves on from the project. This would normally be about the Closing phase of the project but sometimes a little prior to the time. The team members are released from the project at this time and project deliverables are completed

Final Thoughts

The duration of each of the stages varies depending on the makeup of the team as well as the size of the and nature of the project. According the the PMBOK Guide, project managers should have a very good knowledge of the team dynamics to be able to scale throught the stages successfully.

I would like to thank you for reading and you can leave comments below to let me know if this has benefitted you.