“The Development Team consists of professionals who do the work of delivering a potentially releasable Increment of “Done” product at the end of each Sprint.” (1)
Self-Organising
No one tells the Development Team how to turn Product Backlog into Increments (1)
Self-organising (3, page 56)
Self-organisation enables:
- creativity
- accountability within the Team
- commitment within the Team to the Sprint Goal
Factors that promote self-organisation
- Trust
- Time-boxing to help focus and manage risks
- Fixed Sprint Length – consistent delivery of value
- Team size – too large increases complexity and overhead for communication
- Definition of ‘Done’ – common understanding within the development team
- Scrum Values
Self Organising Stool (4, page 32)

Cross functional
- Development Teams are cross-functional, with all the skills as a team necessary to create a product Increment (1)
- Cross-functional teams are made up of the various disciplines involved in creating your product (5, page 11)
Benefits (5, page 11)
Diversity
- Diverse teams create better solutions, because each problem is seen from many different points of view
- Diverse teams limits the need for gated, hand-offed based processes
Cohesion
- Teams can share information informally, which creates collaboration earlier in the process and drives greater team efficiency
No-Titles
- Scrum recognises no titles for Development Team members, regardless of the work being performed by the person (1)
No Sub-domains
- Scrum recognises no sub-teams in the Development Team, regardless of domains that need to be addressed like testing, architecture, operations, or business analysis (1)
Accountability
- Individual Development Team members may have specialised skills and areas of focus, but accountability belongs to the Development Team as a whole (1)
- Defining the Definition of Done (2)
Team Size
Too Small (1)
- can’t complete a significant work within a Sprint
- skill constraints during the Sprint, causing the Development Team to be unable to deliver a potentially releasable Increment
- fewer than three Development Team members decrease interaction and results in smaller productivity gains
Too Big (1)
- can’t be nimble
- more than nine members requires too much coordination
- generates too much complexity for an empirical process to be useful
References
- The Scrum Guide
- Scrum: A Pocket Guide by Gunther Verheyen
- Scrum Insights for Practitioners by Hiren Doshi
- Mastering Professional Scrum by Stephanie Ockerman and Simon Reindl
- Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf
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