SC QUALITY GUILDTeam development stages
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Sixteen statements about how your team behaves now, scored against the four stages, with what helps the team at the stage it is in.
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The four stages
The model most quality courses use comes from Bruce Tuckman (1965). Teams tend to pass through four stages:
- Forming: polite, unsure of purpose and roles, dependent on the leader.
- Storming: disagreement over approach, roles and authority. Uncomfortable and normal.
- Norming: the team agrees how it works, and starts to trust and help each other.
- Performing: the team gets on with the work and solves its own problems.
A fifth stage, adjourning, was added later for when the team disbands. For a project team, it is the handover and closure.
Stages are not one-way
A new member, a change of scope or a missed deadline can send a performing team back to storming. Treat the result as a description of today, not a grade. The most useful way to use this tool is to have every member answer separately, then talk about where the answers differ.
What the leader does changes
The leader directs most in forming, mediates and clarifies in storming, steps back in norming and delegates in performing. Leading a forming team as if it were performing leaves it lost; leading a performing team as if it were forming frustrates it.
Types of team
The Yellow Belt Body of Knowledge also asks about team types. A process improvement team works on one process and disbands. A cross-functional team draws from several departments. A self-directed or work group team manages its own day-to-day work. A special project team is assembled for one purpose. A virtual team works mainly remotely, which makes the storming stage easier to hide and harder to resolve.
On the Yellow Belt exam
Types of teams (I.D.1) and stages of team development (I.D.2) are in the 2022 CSSYB Body of Knowledge. Expect to identify a stage from a described behavior, and the type of team from a described set-up.