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The Team Development Measure (TDM) is a measure of the level of development of a team constructed by Bill Mahoney, PhD, and Carolyn Turkovich. The measure is grounded in the conceptual and applied literature on teams and health care teamwork and utilizes the most sophisticated measurement methods available (Rasch measurement). The measure has been evaluated in more than 150 teams and with more than 1000 team members ranging from executive teams to outpatient clinics and inpatient hospital care units. The measure provides precise information with teams as small as 3-4 people and has been used with teams as large as 43 people.

Team development is the degree to which a team has in place the components needed for highly effective teamwork and how firmly these components are in place. These components consist ofcohesiveness, communication, role clarity and goals-means clarity.

Scores on the measure are interval (one point is the same size anywhere on the scale) and thus the measure literally constitutes a yardstick to measure team development. Scores range from 0-100 where 0 = no team development and 100 = full team development. Team development is thus how far the team is up the yardstick between no team development and full team development.

The TDM is a performance measure used to promote quality improvement in team-based healthcare. Development and analysis of the TDM was made possible through support from the John A Hartford Foundation, Inc., the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and PeaceHealth.