An Identity Perspective for Predicting Software Development Project Temporal Success

Theoretical Perspectives On Group Development

Group development literature has a long, rich and somewhat divided history¹. Early researchers of group development suggested that productive groups progress sequentially through a series of well defined stages during their life (Tuckman & Jensen, 1977). While a sequential view of group development doesn’t preclude the existence of behaviors in any given stage (i.e., work activities in the forming stage), it does suggest that each phase is characterized by a dominant set of behaviors specific to that phase (Wheelan, 1994). A sequential perspective suggests that groups must navigate in a linear fashion through each developmental stage before they can have a chance of attaining task success. In the late 1980s, the idea of gradual sequential development was challenged by the research of Connie Gersick (1988, 1989), who used a widely accepted theory of biological evolution (PE) to frame the task-related behavior of small groups. The PE perspective illustrated that groups are likely to complete tasks on-time provided they share a consistent sensitivity to temporal deadlines and demonstrate that sensitivity through increased activity at the group’s temporal midpoint. While often positioned as competing and tangential explanations of group development (Wheelan, Davidson, & Tilin, 2003), recent work has suggested that both perspectives offer valid explanations of group behavior, but from different points of reference. Specifically, sequential models of group development focus on the socio-emotional development of groups throughout their life while a PE model illustrates group development in light of work activity over time (Chang, Bordia, & Duck, 2003). Since this research focuses on the temporal nature of SD projects, a PE model of group development is the most appropriate framework for understanding the role of group development in temporal SD project success.