Tuckman’s Stages of Group Development, proposed by psychologist Bruce Tuckman in 1965, is one of the most famous theories of team development. It describes four stages that teams may progress through: forming, storming, norming, and performing (a fifth stage was added later: adjourning). This model describes the evolution of a team's dynamics and leadership style as it progresses through these developmental phases.
Does Scrum Team also follow Tuckman's model?
Yes. All teams, according to Tuckman's approach, must move through each stage before either dissolving or operating at their highest level of effectiveness. The team's maturity is a key factor in determining how quickly it moves through these stages. In Scrum, without proper coaching, not all teams can inevitably progress to the norming or performing stages so quickly.
Accelerating the team's transition to the performing stage is one of the main goals of organizations when using Scrum or any other agile methodology. In a sprint, the best value is created during this period, and problems are effectively fixed.
Scrum naturally facilitates a quicker transition to the performing stage. A rapid growth is made possible during the forming stage by the clear expression of team objectives and the clearly defined roles of the team and people. The replacement of traditional Project Manager responsibilities with Scrum Master and Product Owner also minimizes position ambiguity and promotes clarity.
Scrum uses ego-safe approaches like planning poker and estimating in relative story points, which protect people and foster good relationships, to get through the storming stage, which frequently involves disagreements.
When the team enters the norming stage, the manager or leader takes a back seat while the coach assumes a more active role. During sprint planning, the Scrum Master/Coach promotes self-organization and team commitment fulfilment to assist the team in reaching its objectives independently.
The team is most effective when it is performing because there, collective ownership is encouraged and blaming is not used. Teams that reach this stage have a better level of adaptability to changes, but less developed teams may regress to earlier stages as a result of disruptions.
Storming is a stage that significantly lowers performance, thus it is evident that you want to minimize its duration. Reduce this stage's duration as much as possible. Also it is crucial to refrain from making changes to the team during the norming stage because doing so can cause sending the team back to the forming stage, and possibly cause the storming stage to repeat itself. In short, to avoid having a significant negative impact on performance, any decision to modify a Scrum team should be carefully thought out.