We explored how software development teams form and interact in a computer science college course setting and what an instructor can do to enhance effective teamwork. The experiences of computer science college course's teams are compared and contrasted to the theory of Bruce Tuckman's stages of small group development model, which he characterized as forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. Participants repeatedly self-assessed their enthusiasm and skill levels over time using a questionnaire by agreeing or disagreeing to statements utilizing a five-point Likert scale. The data shows patterns similar to that of Tuckman's model. Since most people find his model easy to understand, it may provide an effective tool to teach teamwork and monitor team development. Indicators for which instructors or students can watch to identify a team that is struggling are provided.

Prior research in software environments focused on three important problems---tool integration, artifact management, and process guidance. The context for that research, and hence the orientation of the resulting environments, was a traditional model of development in which an application is developed completely from scratch by a single organization. A notable characteristic of component-based development is its emphasis on integrating independently developed components produced by multiple organizations. Thus, while component-based development can benefit from the capabilities of previous generations of environments, its special nature induces requirements for new capabilities not found in previous environments. This paper is concerned with the design of component-based development environments, or CBDEs. We identify seven important requirements for CBDEs and discuss their rationale, and we describe a prototype environment called WREN that we are building to implement these requirements and to further evaluate and study the role of environment technology in component-based development. Important capabilities of the environment include the ability to locate potential components of interest from component distribution sites, to evaluate the identified components for suitability to an application, to incorporate selected components into application design models, and to physically integrate selected components into the application.