Creating valuable releasable product increments!
According to the Scrum Guide, Scrum is a framework within which people can address complex problems, and productively and creatively develop products of the highest possible value. It's a tool organizations can use to increase their agility.
Within Scrum self-organizing, cross-functional, and highly productive teams do the work: creating valuable releasable product increments. Scrum offers a framework that catalyzes the teams learning through discovery, collaboration and experimentation.
A great Scrum Team consists of a Product Owner who maximizes value, a Scrum Master who enables continuous improvement and a Development Team who focus on delivering high quality product increments.
For sure this sounds great!
But what are the characteristics of such a great Scrum team? This white paper will answer that question. It offers a detailed description of the characteristics and skills of a great Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team, for the next posts!
THE PRODUCT OWNER
The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product and the work of the Development Team. It's a one-person role that brings the customer perspective of the product to a Scrum Team.
The Product Owner is responsible for:
- Developing and maintaining a product vision and market strategy;
- Product management;
- Ordering and managing the Product Backlog;
- Involving stakeholders and end-users in Product Backlog refinement and backlog management;
- Alignment with other Product Owners when needed from an overall product, company or customer perspective.
THE SCRUM MASTER
According to the Scrum Guide the Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring Scrum is understood and enacted. Scrum Masters do this by ensuring that the Scrum Team adheres to Scrum theory, practices, and rules. The Scrum Master is a servant-leader for the Scrum Team. The Scrum Master helps those outside the Scrum Team understand which of their interactions with the Scrum Team are helpful and which aren’t. The Scrum Master helps everyone change these interactions to maximize the value created by the Scrum Team.
The role of a Scrum Master is one of many stances and diversity. A great Scrum Master is aware of them and knows when and how to apply them, depending on situation and context. Everything with the purpose of helping people understand and apply the Scrum framework better.
The Scrum Master acts as a:
- Servant Leader whose focus is on the needs of the team members and those they serve (the customer), with the goal of achieving results in line with the organization's values, principles, and business objectives;
- Facilitator by setting the stage and providing clear boundaries in which the team can collaborate;
- Coach coaching the individual with a focus on mindset and behaviour, the team in continuous improvement and the organization in truly collaborating with the Scrum team;
- Conflict navigator to address unproductive attitudes and dysfunctional behaviors;
- Manager responsible for managing impediments, eliminate waste, managing the process, managing the team's health, managing the boundaries of self-organization, and managing the culture;
- Mentor that transfers agile knowledge and experience to the team;
- Teacher to ensure Scrum and other relevant methods are understood and enacted.
THE DEVELOPMENT TEAM
According to the Scrum Guide 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. Only members of the Development Team create the Increment. Development Teams are structured and empowered by the organization to organize and manage their own work. The resulting synergy optimizes the Development Team’s overall efficiency and effectiveness.
Development Teams have the following characteristics:
- Self-organizing. They decide how to turn Product Backlog Items into working solutions.
- Cross-functional. As a whole, they've got all the skills necessary to create the product Increment.
- No titles. Everyone is a Developer, no one has a special title.
- No sub-teams in the Development team.
- Committed to achieving the Sprint Goal and delivering a high quality increment.
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