After being created, the team goes through a stage of formation and maturity, towards excellence.
Evolution of a Scrum Team
How does a team become mature?
One of the characteristics of a mature team is its credibility before the client.
In this context, credibility means that the client trusts the team in multiple aspects. It is important that the team delivers value to the customer and to do so it has to realize what the customer really wants, to which he gives value. In this matter the Product Owner can help the team understand the vision of the customer and at the same time should facilitate the communication of the team with the client, creating proximity.
On the other hand, developing in collaboration with the client means showing him what is being done, realizing if that is the way.
It is essential to invest in the review sessions. The Product Owner must ensure that the customer is present in these sessions. The team must ensure that the customer sees exactly what was built and not a plan of what will be.
As the customer follows the entire development of the product, it is not difficult to see when it will be ready. It is not necessary to have a formal timed plan of deliveries.
To achieve maturity, the team must be completely at ease with the Scrum Framework. The role of the Scrum Master is essential to help the team to internalize.
Also the Product Owner has a crucial role at this stage. He helps the development team using grooming sessions to ensure a better understanding of the requirements. For its part, the team must learn to ask questions and make suggestions for improvement. This will allow the team to avoid rework.
The Scrum Master should facilitate the sprint retrospective so that the team can make self-evaluation and look for ways to improve. The follow up should be done during the sprint so that the improvement actions do not fall by the wayside.
The daily stand-up meeting should be kept short and focused. By now this should be happening naturally. There should be no need to call everyone to the meeting. It is important that all team members start to understand the purpose of the meeting and also who should attend it. The Scrum Master should step back and let the team facilitate its own meeting.
The successes are to celebrate and the mature teams learn how to do it. There should be an understanding about what is to celebrate and what is expected to be done and has nothing to celebrate.
Following these steps, the team acquires skills and obtains results that are characteristic of mature teams.
And you, how do you help your teams grow?
(picture: dried cherry tomato from our kitchen garden)
Thoughts of an Agile Player 