Sheila's Blog

Scrum requires a team of people rather than a group of individuals. A team has a common goal and set of standards. They will collaborate and support each other to achieve that goal. The team size is usually 4-9. Ideally the team members are full-time and co-located to help communication.

The team should be cross-functional, including whatever skills are needed to achieve the goal. Each person should ideally be a generalist rather than a specialist. Rather than creating bottlenecks where tasks can only be done by a limited number of resources, knowledge should be shared among other team members. The hierarchy is flat – each member must participate and commit to what will be delivered. The team as a whole succeeds or fails.

Tuckman phases:
Bruck Tuckman described a model of group development in 1965. The model has 4 phases, all of which are necessary for a team to grow and deliver reults.

Forming – a new team meets, gets to know each other and agrees on goals.
Storming – the team addresses issues including how the team will function and what standards will be applied. Some teams never progress past this stage.
Norming – the team adjusts to working together, motivation and productivity increases.
Performing – the team is functioning effectively as a group with little conflict or guidance.

Obviously the goal in scrum is to bring the team all the way through to the performing stage.  Unfortunately it only takes a small change like replacing a team member to potentially bring the team back to the forming stage again.

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