What’s a team?
According to the Scrum Guide, it’s a small group of people and interactions between them that’s the essence of Scrum. First, though, we need to define what we mean by a team in general. There are several approaches to it. The most common one says a team is a group of people doing individual tasks that lead to a common goal or objective. The team is more than that as far as a Scrum Team is concerned.
ST shares accountability and takes ownership for the product
accountability vs responsibility
The Scrum Guide lists three Scrum accountabilities: Product Owner, developers and Scrum Master. The entire Scrum Team is responsible for creating releasable increments every Sprint. Accountability is more than responsibility. The latter is task-oriented. You’re responsible for completing tasks, projects. It’s your duty to do it. However, if something goes wrong, the accountable person bears the consequences, and not the person who did the work. Hence, accountability refers to the consequences of someone’s actions, typically your subordinate. It’s normally one person who is accountable. A Product Owner is held accountable for the Product Backlog. Even if he delegates others to manage it, he’s accountable for it.
ownership-taking
The Scrum Team’s ownership ties in closely with its accountability. Being accountable, you’re responsible for the result of work. When we take ownership we know that it’s our responsibility to do work, and not someone else’s. Although on a Scrum Team we work with others, as individuals we have a sense of responsibility to get the work done. If you take ownership of the product, you treat it like it’s your own. So, on the one hand Scrum team members have the sense of collective accountability and ownership of increments delivered, but on the other hand every individual has a feeling of ownership for the work done, since they’re united by the common goal.
Scrum team is cross-functional
The cross-functionality of the team means its members taken as a whole are able to do the work properly. It doesn’t mean every team member has the same set of skills. They rather complete each other as well as learn from one another. Despite performing different tasks, members on the Scrum team don’t have any job titles. To learn more details about what a cross-functional team is like, read my post on it here.
Scrum team is self-managing, but has nothing to do with anarchy
As opposed to traditional Waterfall-based project teams, Scrum doesn’t differentiate the role of a project manager. Therefore, it’s up to developers how they plan their work, who they assign tasks to, and how they turn requirements into workable functionalities. They’re free to decide about that. If given some room to decide, professionals have the opportunity to develop, get better results, and as a result win more and more trust from the management. This takes time though. A Scrum Master helps the team in self-organization by fostering the proper environment. The Team receives the goal from the outside, and organizes its work within itself. At times, it happens the team decides who should be taken on to the team. Self-managing teams are more efficient: they deliver more quickly and early. They are highly motivated, goal-oriented and success-driven.
Scrum team is learning
Agile that Scrum is based on puts emphasis on seeing changes as an opportunity to grow, and not as blockers. Teaching the Team to adapt to new situations pushes it into working in an experimental mode that creates conditions under which the team can continuously learn. A Scrum Master not only teaches Scrum, but at later stages with more mature teaches developers how to learn. We learn through experience that Scrum is based on.
Self-empowerment
In organizations which put people first, mature teams are self-empowered. What is self-empowerment? In order to learn how to put people first, I recommend watching a speech by Jim Hemerling here. He provides 5 ways which The team is given more autonomy to take decisions that influence the organization. They can decide how they work, and therefore have bigger sense of ownership and accountability for the process, product or the project. They can’t, however, go beyond the framework. Empowered teams are provided with tools and work in the environment in which they come up with innovative ideas.