After reading this article, it’s clear to me how important group development and teamwork are in both school and professional settings. Without effective teamwork, I doubt we’d have seen nearly as many innovations and advancements in the last few decades. This insight is especially relevant to my future career in software engineering, where most projects require collaboration. Team members combine their skills and ideas to build a single, functioning system, making group dynamics critical.

Learning about Tuckman’s stage model of group development really helped me understand what went right—and what went wrong—during a shared experience between two universities. It gave me a framework to analyze team interactions and recognize how stages like forming, storming, and norming can affect performance. I plan to apply this model myself in my next lab meeting this week to see if it makes a difference in how our group works together.

I’m curious to see whether using this model improves our performance or creates any initial confusion. We already have a solid workflow, so introducing a new approach might shake things up a bit. I’ll reflect on the results in my next DEJ post and see what impact, if any, this framework had.

Natvig, D., & Stark, N. L. (2016). A project team analysis using Tuckman’s model of small-group development.