Tuckman Ladder
The Tuckman ladder is a model of team development in five stages: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. Bruce Tuckman described the first four in 1965; he added the fifth with Mary Ann Jensen in 1977. The PMBOK Guide lists it among the tools of the Lead the Team process. The project manager uses it to identify the team's stage from observed behaviour, then to adapt their leadership. The stages usually follow this order, but a team can stall, regress or skip one.
Goal
The Tuckman ladder is a descriptive model: it names each stage a team passes through between its formation and its dissolution, with the behaviour typical of that stage.
A team that argues about method in week three is going through an expected stage. The same argument in month four, after two new members have joined, signals a regression. Without the model, the project manager sees two conflicts and responds to both in the same way. With it, they recognise two stages and choose the action that fits each.
The PMBOK Guide defines no deliverable specific to the ladder. The Lead the Team process produces team performance assessments, and the stage diagnosis feeds them. The diagnosis fits in a one-page table: the signs observed, their source, the dimension concerned (relations or task), the stage they point to and the action chosen.
Usage
When to use
- A team assembled for the first time: prepare the launch, the roles and the working rules before the first disagreements.
- Repeated disagreements over method or technical choices: tell expected storming from a deadlock that is setting in.
- Members joining or leaving mid-project: check whether the team has regressed and rework what no longer holds.
- Change of project manager, sponsor or scope: redo the diagnosis, because the established rules may no longer hold.
- Performance that plateaus although the team has the skills: look for a team stuck in storming or in norming.
- Members released one by one at the end of the project: prepare adjourning, knowledge transfer included.
When not to use
- A question about one person: an individual difficulty or appraisal; handle it in a one-to-one conversation, through coaching or through mentoring.
- Contributors without interdependent work: they do not form a team in the model's sense; coordinate them through the schedule and a RACI matrix.
Description
Two dimensions to observe
Tuckman drew his model from a review of fifty studies, mostly of therapy groups and training groups. He presents it as a set of hypotheses. The PMBOK Guide applies it to the project team.
Tuckman describes each stage along two dimensions: group structure, meaning how the members behave towards one another, and task activity, meaning how they approach the work. He holds that the two dimensions move together. A team that preserves harmony by avoiding disagreement over the task is in norming: that is how Tuckman describes it.
The project manager still gains from reading the two dimensions separately, because a gap between the dimensions or between two subgroups is a sign in itself. This separate reading comes from practice; Tuckman does not propose it.
| Dimension | Forming | Storming | Norming | Performing | Adjourning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Relations: group structure | Testing and dependence | Intragroup conflict | Cohesion | Functional roles | Stage added in 1977; the sources do not describe it dimension by dimension. |
| Task: task activity | Orientation to the task | Emotional response to the demands of the task | Open exchange of interpretations | Emergence of solutions |
The five stages
The description of each stage comes from the PMBOK Guide. The signs and the project manager's actions are a practitioner's judgement: the guide only asks the project manager to adapt their style to the members' willingness and ability (§2.6.2.4).
| Stage | Description (PMBOK Guide) | Observable signs | What the project manager does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forming | The members meet and learn about the project, their roles and their responsibilities. They tend to stay independent and not very open. | Questions go to the project manager rather than to colleagues. Meetings are polite and objections rare. Each member works on their own part. | Set the frame: vision, objectives, roles, working rules. Decide what the team cannot yet settle itself. |
| Storming | The team takes on the work, the technical decisions and the project management approach. Without collaboration and openness to other views, the climate can turn counterproductive. | Disagreements over estimates, tools or architecture. Challenges to the project manager's approach. Alliances between subgroups. | Keep the conflict on the work and off the people. Arbitrate, then record each decision and what it settles. |
| Norming | The members work together, adjust their habits and behaviour for the good of the team and learn to trust one another. | The team sets its own rules. Members help one another. Disagreements are settled without the project manager. | Let the team own its rules. Check that the calm does not hide topics the team avoids. |
| Performing | The team works as an organised unit. Its members are interdependent and resolve problems smoothly and effectively. | The team flags and resolves its own problems. It anticipates obstacles and reorganises without instructions. | Delegate, remove external obstacles, recognise contributions. Shield the team from changes that would make it regress. |
| Adjourning | The team completes the work and leaves the project, most often as its members are released when their deliverables are finished. | Staggered departures. Attention turned to the next assignment. Knowledge concentrated in the members who are leaving. | Plan the releases, transfer knowledge before each departure, run the lessons learned, recognise the work done. |
The project manager prepares forming before the first session. A kick-off meeting presents the vision and the objectives; a RACI matrix sets the roles. With the team, the project manager draws up the team charter, which lays down the working rules (§2.6.2.4.1).
Many project managers try to cut storming short. Yet storming is where the team settles its disagreements over method, tools and the division of work. A project manager who smothers them with authority meets them again in the middle of delivery, as reopened decisions. The project manager has each disagreement settled, records the decision and refuses to let a settled topic be reopened without new facts.
Norming produces a calm that looks like performance. In norming, the team protects its cohesion; in performing, it puts that cohesion to the test to solve a problem. A team whose members no longer dare to contradict one another has stayed in norming.
The PMBOK Guide lists factors associated with high-performing teams (§2.6.2.4.2): open communication, shared understanding, shared ownership, trust, collaboration, adaptability, resilience, autonomy and recognition. A team in performing shows them all. At this stage the project manager intervenes less in the work and more in what surrounds it: external obstacles, trade-offs with the sponsor, the arrival of new members.
Adjourning coincides with go-live, which absorbs the project manager's attention. Each departure takes away knowledge that is written down nowhere. The project manager plans the releases with the line managers, organises the handover before each departure and runs the lessons learned while the team is still together.
Stalling, regression and skipping
The PMBOK Guide notes that the stages often occur in order, but that a team can get stuck in one stage or regress to an earlier one. A team whose members have worked together before can also skip a stage.
A stall shows through repetition. A team stuck in storming reopens the same topics from one meeting to the next without settling them. A team stuck in forming expects every decision from the project manager, in month three as in month one.
Regression follows an event. A member joining or leaving, a new project manager or sponsor, a changed scope or deadline, a reorganisation at the client: each calls into question rules that the team thought were settled. The project manager therefore redoes the diagnosis after each of these events, without waiting for the scheduled date.
A skip requires a shared past. A team carried over from one project to the next arrives with its rules and can move from forming to norming without going through storming. If the new project changes the roles or the method, storming comes back.
A team can be in several stages at once. Two newcomers can be in forming while the long-standing core stays in norming. In a bilingual team, the French speakers and the German speakers sometimes form two subgroups that move at different paces. The diagnosis records these gaps rather than averaging them.
Running the diagnosis
- Collect observable signs. Meetings, retrospectives, the issue log, the decision log and the team's written channels provide them. A sign is a dated fact: "two architecture decisions reopened in week 16", not "the atmosphere has become tense".
- Link each sign to a dimension and a stage. The dimension says whether the sign concerns relations or the task; the stage is read from the table of the two dimensions, then from the table of the five stages.
- Settle on a stage per dimension and per subgroup. One outburst in a meeting does not mean the team is storming. It takes several consistent signs from different sources.
- Choose one or two actions. The action targets the dimension where the team has regressed or is stalling. A team-building activity does not settle a disagreement over the task.
- Set the next diagnosis. A date, brought forward if one of the triggering events occurs.
The PMBOK Guide states that the length of each stage depends on the team's dynamics, its size and its leadership. No timetable applies: a four-person team carried over from a previous project can get through forming in a few days, while a fifteen-person team assembled for a two-year programme can stay there for weeks.
In a remote team, the signs show up in the written channels. A disagreement surfaces in a discussion thread; a withdrawal shows as a silence that a meeting room would have made visible. The project manager therefore reads those channels too and adds one-to-one conversations.
Sharing the model with the team helps it read its own tensions: a team that knows storming is expected treats it as a normal stage. Announcing its stage to the team as a verdict does the opposite. The diagnosis remains the project manager's working note; it names people and stays out of the project's shared documents.
AI considerations
A language model summarises meeting minutes, retrospective notes and the issue log. It extracts candidate signs from them: reopened topics, unanswered questions, contested decisions. For each, it proposes a dimension and a stage based on the two tables in the description. It drafts a team charter for the team to discuss in a meeting and, at the end of the project, the list of knowledge to transfer before each departure.
The project manager decides the stage. A model reads texts: it sees neither the tone of a meeting nor a silence nor what is said outside the written channels. The members who write the most weigh the most in its analysis. A team's messages name colleagues: they are personal data under the Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP). They go to a hosted service only anonymised and with the team's consent. A tool that classified each member from their messages would be monitoring individuals; the ladder describes a team. Article 26 of Ordinance 3 to the Employment Act (OLT 3) prohibits systems intended to monitor the behaviour of workers at their workplace.
Examples
A four-person team is building the insured members' portal of a pension fund. In week 14, two developers from an external supplier join it. In week 17, the project manager redoes the diagnosis.
| Sign observed | Source | Dimension | Stage indicated |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Definition of Done adopted in week 6 is contested at two reviews in a row. | Iteration reviews, weeks 16 and 17 | Task | Storming |
| Two architecture decisions taken in week 8 are reopened. | Decision log | Task | Storming |
| Estimates for the same stories: a threefold gap between long-standing and new members, defended on both sides without agreement. | Planning, week 17 | Task | Storming |
| The two newcomers put their questions to the project manager, never in the team channel. | Team channel, direct messages | Relations | Forming |
| The two newcomers do not speak at the retrospective. | Retrospective, week 16 | Relations | Forming |
| The four long-standing members step in on each other's blocked tickets without being asked. | Retrospective, week 16 | Relations | Norming |
| No disagreement among the four long-standing members on the tickets of weeks 15 to 17. | Ticket tracker | Relations | Norming |
| Diagnosis: regression to storming on the task; the newcomers in forming; the core in norming on relations. | |||
| Actions: a one-hour workshop with all six to review and record the Definition of Done; each newcomer paired with a long-standing member for two iterations. Next diagnosis: week 20. | |||
The diagnosis separates the dimensions and the subgroups. A team outing would have targeted relations, where only the two newcomers are holding back, and left untouched the disagreement over the Definition of Done, which concerns the task.
Visualisations
The staircase places the five stages; the arrows show a regression and a skip.
Forming
learning the project and the roles
Storming
disagreement over the work and the approach
Norming
shared rules, trust
Performing
interdependent unit
Adjourning
work done, people leaving
Cost
| Phase | Level | Justification |
|---|---|---|
| Preparation | Low | Know the five stages and their signs; no material to gather and no participants to convene. |
| Execution | Low | Go through sources that already exist (meetings, retrospectives, logs): one to two hours per diagnosis, depending on the size of the team and the number of channels. |
| Documentation | Low | A one-page table per diagnosis, kept by the project manager. |
Tooling
The ladder needs no dedicated tool. A spreadsheet or a notebook holds the diagnosis table. The signs come from the tools the team already uses: the ticket tracker, such as Jira, for reopened topics and blockers; the decision log; the digital whiteboard of the retrospectives, such as Miro or Mural; the chat channels.
A short anonymous questionnaire, sent to the team at regular intervals, adds the members' perception of role clarity, trust and the way disagreements are settled. In a team of six to eight people, an answer is anonymous only if no role gives it away: so ask fewer, broader questions. The PMBOK Guide lists these individual and team assessments among the tools of the same process. An online form is enough.
Sources
- Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), 8th edition, PMI: the Lead the Team process and its tools, adapting the leadership style to the members' willingness and ability, the team charter, the factors associated with high-performing teams (§2.6.2.4); the definition of the Tuckman ladder, its five stages, the fact that their order can vary and what the length of each stage depends on (Section 5).
- Bruce W. Tuckman, "Developmental Sequence in Small Groups", Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 1965, pp. 384-399: the original four-stage model, drawn from a review of fifty studies and presented as a set of hypotheses; the markers of each stage along its two dimensions, group structure and task activity.
- Bruce W. Tuckman and Mary Ann C. Jensen, "Stages of Small-Group Development Revisited", Group & Organization Studies, 2(4), 1977, pp. 419-426: the review of later research and the addition of the fifth stage, adjourning.
- Swiss Confederation, Ordinance 3 to the Employment Act (OLT 3), SR 822.113: art. 26 on the prohibition of systems intended to monitor the behaviour of workers at their workplace.