What is Scrum Team: Structure, Roles and Responsibilities

The Scrum framework offers speed and flexibility in an application development project or any project. Several things need to be considered before forming a Scrum Team.

The Scrum Team itself is a team that is responsible for all activities related to product development.

Within the Scrum framework, the Scrum Team is divided into roles. Each team consists of individuals with different abilities. Like a team, they work according to their capacity to achieve predetermined goals.

Scrum Team

Scrum Team is a team which usually consists of 5 to 9 individuals with different roles. At first glance, a Scrum Team may look like any other team. However, it has two distinguishing characteristics, namely self-management and cross-functionality.

Self-managed means the team has the authority and freedom to determine the best solution. Meanwhile, cross-functional means that all the expertise needed to achieve goals is in the Scrum team.

Scrum Team Structure

Scrum Team is a team which usually consists of 5 to 9 individuals with different roles. At first glance, a Scrum Team may look like any other team. However, it has two distinguishing characteristics, namely self-management and cross-functionality.

Self-managed means the team has the authority and freedom to determine the best solution.

Meanwhile, cross-functional means that all the expertise needed to achieve goals is in the Scrum team.

1. Product Owner

Product Owner is a role that focuses on product success. The Product Owner tries to maximize the software product’s value for its users.

Therefore, Product Owners work collaboratively in a team with the Development Team and provide direction for product development through their product vision.

The Product Owner sets work priorities for the Development Team so that the best value from software products can be obtained gradually and iteratively.

Apart from working with the Development Team, the Product Owner also builds active collaboration with stakeholders. Stakeholders are anyone outside the team interested in the software product’s success.

We can call management, clients, and product sponsors as stakeholders.

The Product Owner is an individual, not a group. The Product Owner represents the voice of stakeholders and seeks common ground among the many interests in the product through good communication.

For the Product Owner to successfully carry out their role, stakeholders and the Development Team must respect the decisions made by the Product Owner.

Simply put, Product Owner is a value maximizer, an innovative product.

2. Development Team

The Development Team consists of various roles needed to build a software product. Some specific roles we commonly encounter are software developers, UI designers, interaction designers, and quality assurance.

These roles collaborate in the Development Team daily, building software products according to work priorities agreed upon with the Product Owner.

In Scrum, anyone who is part of the Development Team is called a Developer. No specific roles within the Development Team are defined by Scrum. Everyone is a Developer, and anyone can do whatever it takes to build quality software.

Creating a Development Team that is both cross-functional and self-organized takes work. There is a process that must go through with time and patience to improve the team to such a level.

Simply put, the Development Team is a builder, a developer.

3. Scrum Masters

The Scrum Master is focused on successfully implementing a software process called Scrum. The Scrum Master’s role can be understood from his specific roles: process manager, coach, facilitator, and change agent.

As a process manager, the Scrum Master ensures that activities in development follow the Scrum process. The Scrum Master helps the Product Owner and Development Team to work collaboratively within the Scrum process framework.

As a coach, the Scrum Master trains the Scrum Team in using Scrum appropriately according to the daily organizational context so that the benefits of Scrum can be optimally obtained.

The Scrum Master helps everyone on the Scrum Team understand the purpose and benefits of Scrum for successful software product development. About the Development Team, the Scrum Master helps the team reach a cross-functional and self-organized level.

As a facilitator, the Scrum Master becomes the facilitator for the Scrum Team in Scrum meetings. The Scrum Master seeks a decision between the Product Owner and the Development Team to provide the best software produced through consensus deliberation.

Finally, as a change agent, the Scrum Master brings changes to the team and organization towards a better implementation of the Scrum process.

For new organizations, the Scrum Master introduces Scrum to the organization and helps the organization adopt Scrum. The Scrum Master guides process changes from the current software process, which is generally undefined, to the Scrum process.

Scrum Phase

The development process in Scrum can be grouped into five phases. These phases are as follows:

1. Initiate

This phase is the initial stage of the Scrum development process. This phase includes forming a team, creating a project vision, and determining the product backlog.

2. Plan and Estimate

In this phase, planning is carried out to start the sprint implementation, including writing user stories, describing tasks for each user story, estimating the value of user stories and tasks, and determining the sprint backlog.

3. Implementation

This phase is the stage to execute each task that has been defined. In this phase, the team has also carried out activities to form the product.

At this stage there is also a daily stand up meeting, where the team evaluates what team members have done for a certain period of time. At that time it can also be told what problems were encountered during implementation.

4. Review and Research

At this stage, a review will be carried out on the results of the team’s work (deliverable product) during one sprint.

Not only the results, the team’s work process is also assessed so that it can be determined what needs to be improved for the development process in the next sprint.

A sprint is considered successful if it produces a Deliverable Product that meets the acceptance criteria that have been determined and approved by the product owner.

5. Release

At this stage, products that meet all acceptance criteria are sent to the client. In addition, documentation of any lessons learned during development is also carried out.

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