How to Form Scrum Teams

Clearly deliniate roles to form an effective scrum team.

As an agile manager, you know scrum is a crucial part of team success. Building, managing and coaching a scrum team to its highest level of performance sits paramount on your list of priorities. Once you understand the essentials of forming an effective scrum team, you are ready to move forward with a successful and productive team.

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

1. Determine team participation membership and levels to devise a structure. Each team member should know his role, as well as the roles of all those around him. Create a cohesive vision decided with all members' input and publish this statement of vision published to everyone on the team. Doing so creates a sense of camaraderie and unity.

2. Foster positive lateral and horizontal team relations. There should be a clear delineation of management level powers as well as a clear division of competencies among the team members. This reduces the potential for power struggles, which hinders productivity. As communications form, ensure teams have a set of agreed-to rules and procedures to follow.

3. Ensure the entire team can work in an efficient process. Accomplish this by first ensuring each team member has the autonomy to make decisions and execute them yet knows when to involve the team as a whole. The team itself should also have bodily autonomy to make and execute on decisions and should consistently work toward desired solutions.

References

• Scrum Alliance: Coaching Scrum Teams
• Leader of the Band: Mike Cohn