How to Structure an Agile Scrum Team for Product Development
Though it’s among the most commonly adopted Agile practices in the entire world, not many have the know-how that the term “Scrum” is derived from the rugby term.
Scrum and rugby have lots of things in common. Both of them are centred around teamwork. Team structures have a small group of individuals, and everyone has an essential role in achieving a shared goal. By this, we mean the delivery of functional software applications.
The best approach to succeed with the Agile framework is to structure an Agile scrum team. Keep reading to know more about the scrum team, who all are part of this team, the ideal practices, and the latest tips.
What is a Scrum team?
Scrum is the iterative project management framework for ideally applying the agile methodology. This framework generally focuses on ongoing improvement and learning to provide an agile mindset and enables teams to work together to build projects.
With just a few rules, the Scrum framework gives a flexible guideline for teams to abide by and adapt to their projects and development environments. This flexibility feature makes it an excellent structure across them and organizations.
The basic Scrum Framework is made up of the different elements:
- The entire agile Scrum team
- A prioritized backlog of user requirements
- Scrum events such as sprint planning meetings, daily Scrum meetings, etc.
- Sprints
The Ideal Agile Scrum Team Structure
There are three key roles that play a crucial role in the Scrum team: product owner, scrum master and development team. Stakeholders are also there at different degrees with highly agile projects. In bigger enterprises, there are basically many business team members included in the development process.
Scrum Team Size
A Scrum team should have less than 9 individuals. For major enterprise projects, the perfect Scrum team size is 7 individuals (product owner, scrum master, and 5 developers). Smaller projects generally have four team members (product owner, scrum master, and 2 developers). Teams less than this wouldn’t technically be Scrum, as there would be too much overhead with every activity.
PRO TIP: Keep your team consistent and simple. Don’t begin your first project by bringing in new roles or including temporary team members. That attracts more confusion and risks.
Members of an Agile Scrum Team
There are three different roles within the Scrum team structure: Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Development Team.
Scrum Master
The Scrum Master acts as a Team Lead. This person ensures that the team implements the Scrum framework efficiently. They also are support leaders who ensure that the team works more productively without any blockage. They guide the entire team on the best practices, reduce distractions and even conduct Scrum meetings on a regular basis. They assist product owners in handling the backlog and making a plan of action.
Their role includes coaching the team on the best practices, ruling in overbearing product owners, reducing distractions and also, and resulting in regular scrum meetings. They enable product owners to define the product’s value, control the backlog and properly plan the work.
Product Owner
Product owners show the interests of the stakeholder or the client. They have a complete know-how of business as well as user requirements and are quite responsible for defining the project direction. They prioritize and define the work needed for the product being made and convey the Scrum team requirements. The role includes:
- Building and managing the backlog of product
- Ensuring everyone have clear communication with the business team
- Coach the team on every iteration’s deliverables
- Set the timelines of product development as well as delivery.
- Scrum team members work together and discuss how to manage the work. But, the product owner has the final call on what to do first and when.
Development team
A group of individuals with particular skills needed to put the product altogether from the Scrum Development Team. The team involves developers as well as testers and can likewise comprise expert roles such as those of writers, architects, designers, etc. When the product owner sets the priorities, it comes down to the development team to find out how to get the job done.
The development team’s members are completely self-organized as well as authorities of their domain. The team, as a Scrum rule, is extremely collaborative as well as close-knit in doing their day-to-day roles.
Also, large-scale may include Subject Matter Experts or SME s in the professional team. They might not be involved actively in the regular activities of the team but provide their services as and when needed by the core team.
