From Storming to Norming

By Hassan Syed
ISIS Assistant Director

At the end of this week we will complete the four-week code-writing phase of Sprint 2 (taxonomy screens). Then we will enter a week-long testing phase followed by 11 days of bug fixes. We will deliver Sprint 2 on time by 27 February. Then we will head into the increasingly challenging work of Sprint 3 (enclosures).

It has been fascinating to assemble the ZIMS team from many countries and many cultures, but all speaking the same language of technology. Our team stretches between Minnesota, USA and Gurgaon, India, but the individual members live all over - from Austin, Texas to Istanbul, Turkey, from New Orleans in the southern USA to Surry in the south of England. Communications technology, augmented by the occasional airplane flight, allows this far-flung team to work together for a common purpose - to build ZIMS for you.

In the mid 1960’s a psychologist by the name of Bruce Tuckman proposed that every group passes through certain observable phases as the members of the group learn how to work together. It has been intriguing to watch Tuckman’s descriptions come true for the ZIMS team. Tuckman’s phases are:

· Forming: Group members learn about each other and display a variety of commitment, concern, confusion and excitement.
· Storming: As group members deepen their interactions, they engage each other in arguments about the structure of the group, sometimes highly emotional. Struggle for status emerges.
· Norming: Group members establish implicit or explicit rules about how they will achieve their goal. They address the types of communication that will or will not move the group toward its goal.
· Performing: Group members move into cohesion and activities and interactions become more smooth. Creativity, fun and high morale begin to display themselves.

It’s a bit humbling when science predicts human behavior so accurately, but it is also very reassuring, when we are in moments of tension, to know that our working group is evolving normally! I would say that the ZIMS group is passing from Storming to Norming as we continue our work on Sprint 2.