Teams are at the hear of any project. But how teams are constructed and how they operate is what separates traditional models versus more modern models. Below I have recapped what makes a Scrum Team unique.

Characteristics of the project team

Project teams execute the work defined in the Sprint backlog. But, scrum teams function differently. They are interdisciplinary and self-managing. Both characteristics, however, our counterintuitive in a world often dominated by traditional approaches to team building and team management.

Traditional teams

first, consider the team composition. Many traditional teams have a functional focus. What this means is that the team is composed of experts from a single domain. So, one team might be a design team, another a supply chain team, another equality control team, and another a marketing team. Each team contains experts from the same domain. The apparent benefit from this approach is that these teams represent a source of considerable expertise. In the process of creating a revised website, the team would include only individuals from the marketing department. In the same way, a project focused on quality improvement would include only those from the quality management department.

Interdisciplinary teams

These traditional teams might even pass work from one team to the next. So, a project might begin with a design team, which then passes their work to the supply chain team, which is then passed to the quality control team, and finally to the logistics team. but, there is a disadvantage. These domain specific teams tend to focus more on maintaining their own domain specific expertise than on delivering customer value. Accordingly, we would not expect this approach to be compatible with the customer-centric approach of scrum.

Scrum teams, on the other hand, our disciplinary or cross-functional. So the team might include two people with the design expertise, and one each with supply chain, quality, and logistics experience. It is quite possible that no two team members may have the same area of expertise. What this means is that the team assigned to a Sprint must do all of the work and, in most situations, not rely on outside experts. Projects are not passed from one team to another. this approach fosters self-sufficiency and responsibility to get the job done regardless of the problems that are encountered. The complaint that this is not a responsibility is rarely heard.

Responsibilities of the project team

Consider a clothing manufacturer. The interdisciplinary project team engages in a full spectrum of activities to deliver a new product. They create several designs, choose those that will be included in the product line, create patterns, search for appropriate suppliers, select suppliers, release the patterns to suppliers, and establish quality controls standards once the products are shipped by those suppliers. The team does all the work and has no need to rely on outside help. They never suggest that it is not our responsibility.

Self-managing

Project teams are self-managing. There is no team leader. There is no manager. There is no person in charge. There is no authority figure. Instead, the team is self-managed, which means that team members work together to determine what needs to be done, when it should be done, and who will do it. When conflicts arise, they resolve them among themselves.

In many ways, this is much more complex than managing a traditional and top-down traditional team. In Scrum, it is the team that plans, manages, reviews, and decides, not the project manager. Scrum demands collaborative behavior! And collaboration is seldom easy!

Engagement

The responsibilities of the team are not limited to the execution of the Sprint backlog. They extend across all the activities necessary to plan a sprint, from product backlog to Sprint planning, Sprint execution, Sprint review, and Sprint retrospective. involvement in all these stages helps to motivate the project team and gain their commitment to the project and its goals.

How will the work get done?

As the group organizes for each sprint, they need to decide how the work will get done. they need to decide what tools will be needed, what techniques will be used, who does what task, and how the team will meet the goal of a potentially shippable product.

Daily scrum

The execution of the project work, as you know, takes place during a sprint. a distinguishing feature of scrum is that each day of work is monitored and controlled by engaging the entire team. This is accomplished during the daily scrum meeting. It lasts no longer than 15 minutes, where the project team reviews the work that has been completed, the work that needs to be done, and the challenges that are likely to be encountered.

Potentially shippable product

At the close of every sprint, the development team must ensure the delivery of a potentially shippable product. That product may be a module of code or a new registration process in a project that is re-engineering patient flow through an emergency department at a hospital. If clothing manufacturer engaged in the design of fall line may deliver concept drawings, fabric swatches and, in a later sprint, deliver samples that provide designers and even customers with the opportunity to explore alternative choices before the final product line is released to its suppliers. All of them represent potentially shippable products.

Who is on the team?

Team members must bring different skill sets to the project. One person may bring design skills while another brings technical skills. One may bring organization skills while another brings management and conflict resolution skills. Another may bring market skills while another may bring customer skills. however, it is the team's performance that is important, not an individual's performance. In short, accountability does not remain with the individual team member, regardless of that person's skills. It remains with the team as a whole. So team selection must also consider how those selected will work together just as much as the skills they bring to the project.

Team size

The size of the project team also requires some thought. It needs to be small enough to create a self-managed environment and yet large enough to deliver a potentially shippable product at the end of the sprint. In general, it should include between two to nine people.

Team Communication

An important consideration is the effect that team size has on communication within the team. since transparency and scrum is an important factor in the ability of the team to fulfill its full range of responsibilities and since communication is an essential component of transparency, the team size must ensure effective communication among team members.

Consider a simple demonstration of the difference in communication between small and large team sizes. When a team sizes four, there are six channels of communications between members, but when the size of the team increases to eight, the number of channels increases to 28. clearly, the more channels, the greater is the challenge to maintain effective levels of communication as well as maintain transparency across all members of the team.