Scrum Characteristics

Self Organized, a word so often used by the SCRUM Teams. According to the definition, this is the group of self-motivated individuals, who work together and have the ability and authority to take decisions. The meaning of self-organized doesn’t mean that the workers will work out the organization design on behalf of managers, instead it is a quick and effective tool to monitor and keep check. The management is completely committed to guide the evolution of behaviors which emerged from the interaction of independent agents.

Empowerment of a scrum team comes from many perspectives:

• If the team is equipped with the right set of resources to deliver what is expected
• The autonomy to make the right decisions to move forward.
• In scrum the decision making is based on observation and experimentation, rather than on detailed upfront planning by somebody who is not a part of the scrum team.

Though management overseeing becomes essential for the Scrum Team to keep the focus on the goals of the project and that of the organization, the scrum team runs like a well-oiled machine that is empowered to take decisions that affect the team’s commitment towards achieving the goal.

Scrum is not always about individual success stories, but about the team’s achievement and failure. It is the culture which nurtures and helps team learning from their achievements. It helps in learning more from the mistakes for moving forward. This is the responsibility of an organization to transmit a culture which will not handicap the scrum team for mistakes. It even encourages experimentation that leads to innovation.

Any integrated team organization will lead to the shared purpose- The Common Goal. Now- a- days, it has become extremely important for a SCRUM Team to achieve their purpose and work towards performing it effectively. It is always advised to the team to have a clear purpose of existence, goals that are charted out at a reasonable level which will come down to a sprint level. What is worth noting here, is that the group goals are not different from individual goals, so the whole purpose is to work towards one target with complete focus and commitment.

It is already understood that the size of the team should be optimal as this will help the members of the team to acquire the right set of skills which will complement each other in the long run increasing collaboration and reducing conflicts. Generally, it has been found that a SCRUM Master or a SCRUM team member needs to be sure rather accurate about the right size of a SCRUM Team. There are multiple answers to this question but the most apt answer is ‘It depends’, since there is no defined size of the team. It is all about experimenting and arriving at the right size of the SCRUM Team is usually between six to ten ideally.

The most important thing over here is to keep the team’s skill requirements within the team. It is required to have a UX Engineer in the team, as the skill adds more value to the team. It is about putting together complete efforts of coordinating with that UX Expert who sits outside the team, and managing that person’s availability etc. Hence, forming a team with a right set is required. Diverse Skills are critical to ensure that the entire SCRUM Team works in collaboration and the skill set within the team is unified yet caters to all aspects and requirements of the organization.

This is the main characteristic feature of a Scrum Team and it should be well inculcated within the team in the same geographical location. It ensures more collaboration, a conducive environment to working as a team and most importantly displaying meaningfully the actual look of a close knit team today. While a good team is an added advantage without a second thought, what also catches the focus is Distributed SCRUM. This is our next set of discussion going ahead and it gives an insight into the challenges rather opportunities that come with it.