Project Life Cycle - Team Building & Leadership Styles

Project Managers should be aware of typical team building dynamics and situational leadership style across a project life cycle.

Team Building: Forming => Storming => Norming => Performing => Adjourning
Leadership Style: Directing   =>   Coaching   =>   Facilitating   =>   Supporting
                             |----------------------------------------------------------------------->  Time
                           Initiating               Project Life Cycle               Closing

Team Building Stages

• Forming: Creating the team
• Storming: Team chaos as people start working with one another
• Norming: Team behavior starts to normalize
• Performing: Team performs as a unit
• Adjourning: Team completes work and disbands

Situational Leadership Styles

• Directing: Provide specific, clear instructions and closely supervise
• Coaching: Solicit input, offer rationale and examples
• Facilitating: Maintain team progress; delegate day-to-day control
• Supporting: Support and motivate the team to complete objectives

Agile Manifesto and 12 Principles

Agile Manifesto Values at a Glance:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer Collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

Agile 12 Principles behind the Agile Manifesto:

1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.
8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
10. Simplicity - the art of maximizing the amount of work not done - is essential.
11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.