Example of a Team Moving Through the Five Stages
Background and Team Members
A team has been pulled together from various parts of a large service organisation
to work on a new process improvement project that is needed to improve how the
company manages and supports its client base. The team lead on this project is
Sandra from the Chicago office who has 15 years experience as a project
manager/team lead managing process improvement projects.
The other members of the team include:
Peter: 10 years experience on various types of projects, expertise in
scheduling and budget control (office location: San Diego)
Sarah: 5 years experience as an individual contributor on projects, strong
programming background, some experience developing databases ( office
location: Chicago)
Mohammed: 8 years experience working on various projects, expertise in
earned value management, stakeholder analysis and problem solving
(office location: New York)
Donna: 2 years experience as an individual contributor on projects (office
location: New York)
Ameya: 7 years experience on process improvement projects, background
in developing databases, expertise in earned value management ( office
location: San Diego)
Sandra has worked on projects with Sarah and Mohammed, but has never worked
with the others. Donna has worked with Mohammed. No one else has worked
with other members of this team. Sandra has been given a very tight deadline to
get this project completed.
Sandra has decided that it would be best if the team met face-to-face initially,
even though they will be working virtually for the project. She has arranged a
meeting at the New York office (company headquarters) for the entire team. They
will spend 2 days getting introduced to each other and learning about the project.
The Initial Meeting (Stage 1: Forming)
The day of the face-to-face meeting in New York has arrived. All team members
are present. The agenda includes:
Personal introductions
Team building exercises
Information about the process improvement project
Discussion around team roles and responsibilities
Discussion around team norms for working together
Introduction on how to use the SharePoint site that will be used for this
project to share ideas, brainstorm, store project documentation, etc
The team members are very excited to meet each other. Each of them has heard
of one another, although they have not worked together as a team before. They
believe they each bring value to this project. The team building exercises have
gone well; everyone participated and seemed to enjoy the exercises. While there