The Core of a Scrum Team

Hello Agile friends, 

This is the third article of our Beyond Mechanical Scrum series. If you haven't yet, please take a look at our previous articles here and here.

The Scrum framework contains Scrum Teams, events, artifacts and rules. 

Today I would like to focus on Scrum Teams. A Scrum Team is composed of the Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development Team. 

They work together to deliver a useable, releasable product increment at least once per Sprint. Two major attributes allow the Scrum Team to accomplish this challenge: they are self-organizing and cross-functional.

Self-organizing Team

Self-organizing teams decide how they are going to deliver their work. No one else tells them how they should do it. This is a breakthrough concept compared to other traditional team models, but it makes total sense when we think that who performs the work has better cognizance of what is necessary to make it happen.

Cross-functional Team

A cross-functional team has all the skills required to deliver work, without depending on anyone external to the team.

You may be wondering: "Ok, so if a team needs a DBA specialist but there is none, they are not a cross-functional team?". Not at all. There are several situations like the one described above. The most important takeaway here is: what will the Scrum Team do to acquire this ability and reduce external dependencies? A course? A knowledge transfer session from a DBA of the company? 

Scrum is based on short feedback loops. This allows us to inspect and adapt everything within our reach. It is our responsibility to work as a self-organizing and cross-functional team in order to do so.

The Scrum Team model

The team model in Scrum is designed to optimize flexibility, creativity, and productivity.

Scrum Guide

Let's go a little deeper on the statement above:

When the team works focused on value, it sees the purpose of any action it takes, and if for any reason, what is being developed does not bring value anymore, flexibility allows the team to adapt in order to regain purpose.

Self-organization encourages creativity as the team needs to think outside the box to solve the situations that may jeopardize it from achieving the Sprint Goal.

Productivity comes by respecting the customer and only doing the work that will genuinely bring him value.

Can anyone from the Scrum Team play more than one role?

There is no place in the Scrum Guide that forbids this from happening. But what we could take into consideration here is, what is the impact of letting this happen?

What may a Scrum Master lose if he is also the Product Owner of the Scrum Team?

Remember the pillars of Scrum (and any other empiric process control): Inspection, Adaptation, and Transparency. 

Clear roles and responsibilities provide transparency. Also, remember about one of the Scrum values: focus. Can anyone perform two roles at the same time without losing focus or jeopardizing any of them?

Reflect on this situation and enrich us with your considerations in the comments section.

BREAKING THE MYTH: Every team member from the Development Team must have all the skills required to deliver work.

Remember that Scrum is about collaboration. Based on that, the team as a whole needs to have all the skills required to deliver work, but this doesn't necessarily mean that every team member needs to know how to do everything.