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Exploring Self-Organizing Teams
Posted by SCRUMstudy® on October 19, 2022
Categories: SBOK® Guide
Self-organizing teams represent a cornerstone of Agile methodology, embodying the principles of empowerment and autonomy. Unlike traditional hierarchical structures, these teams are entrusted with the authority to make decisions and organize their work. By fostering a culture of trust and accountability, they unleash the collective creativity and expertise of their members. Embracing shared ownership of goals and tasks, self-organizing teams adapt fluidly to changing requirements and challenges, driving innovation and efficiency. Through collaboration and continuous improvement, they deliver high-quality results while promoting individual growth and team cohesion.
It is the people who develop great products or service and not the Scrum or any other production technique. Scrum requires the teams to be motivated, empowered and self-organized. Self-motivated employees accept the responsibility and do not wait for the superiors or managers to delegate or and assign the tasks. Hence they deliver greater value when the teams are self-organized.
Scrum teams prefer “Supporting leadership” style of management style where in the leader or the Scrum Master facilitates the work and removes the impediments rather than dominating and closely observing and controlling the Scrum Team functionality.
The chief goals of self-organizing teams are as follows:
Following are the goals of self-organized teams discussed in the SBOK.
- Understand the Project Vision and why the project delivers value to the organization
- Estimate User Stories during the Estimate User Stories process and assign tasks to themselves during the Update Sprint Backlog process
- Identify tasks independently during the Identify Tasks process
- Apply and leverage their expertise from being a cross-functional team to work on the tasks during the Create Deliverables process
- Deliver tangible results which are accepted by the customer and other business stakeholders during the Demonstrate and Validate Sprint process
- Resolve individual problems together by addressing them during Daily Standup Meetings
- Clarify any discrepancies or doubts and be open to learning new things
- Upgrade knowledge and skills on a continuous basis through regular interactions within the team
- Maintain stability of team members throughout the duration of the project by not changing members, unless unavoidable