As you probably know by now three Elegant Coders (Jarod, David and myself) have recently formed Guild 3 Software.
One of the reasons that we were keen to work together is that we have a lot of shared values, not least of which are Integrity, Craftsmanship, Agility and Community. However we had not worked together before. And despite our ideological common ground there are always challenges with any new team. One method of visualizing the stages that you typically go through in this scenario is a model known as Form ? Storm ? Norm ? Perform.
I?m not going to explain the concept as the referenced Wikipedia article does an excellent job of that. However I do want to emphasize that any subsequent changes in the team or the context within which it operates take everyone back to the beginning of the process. Of course if the change is small then the duration of the cycle will often be commensurately short. Understanding the process that we were going through and its psychological ramifications has certainly enabled us to be successful. I hope that it helps you too.