The Team Life Cycle

Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.

Henry Ford

It’s important to see our software teams in the light of their entire lives. Teams don’t spring out of holes in the ground, and they don’t last forever.

KEY CONCEPT

Successful teams are grown and run on purpose; they don’t happen by accident.

There are four distinct stages of a team’s life: creation, growth, work, and closure. At each stage, the focus of activities is different. Sometimes you might iterate through these a few times in different orders, but every team will go through each stage. Subteams within the main development project team will undergo a similar process; this is a recursive model. We’ll look at the details ...

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