[SCRUMDEVELOPMENT] Scrum

[[e-mail] [SCRUMDEVELOPMENT]]

Hi All,


I am following scrum since last 2-3 years and preparing for scrum master certification now. One of the challenges we faced is definition or design of cross-functional and self-organizing development team. As per Scrum guide, Product Backlog is never complete and it keeps evolving or changing. Change in product backlog may create need of new skill in development team. Sometimes this need may be from totally different domain e.g a web development team may need a member with analytics skillset. In this scenario, how can we choose a development team which is self-organizing and cross-functional while starting a project? Also how should we tackle if we come across situation where there is lack of some skill due to change in product backlog?


Thanks,
Sudeep

[Andrew Burrows [e-mail] [SCRUMDEVELOPMENT]]

Hi Sudeep,


Do you mind if I ask some questions?


Do the items in your backlog produce potentially-shippable increments of
your product? Or are they sliced along functional lines (for example, "do
back end coding", "create UX wireframe")?


What are the things you face that makes it difficult to predict the kind of
skills you're likely to need over the next 3 months of your development
cycle?


Finally, what is the skills makeup of a typical Scrum team you deal with?


Cheers,


Andrew

Post by ***@yahoo.co.in [SCRUMDEVELOPMENT]
Hi All,
I am following scrum since last 2-3 years and preparing for scrum master
certification now. One of the challenges we faced is definition or design
of cross-functional and self-organizing development team. As per Scrum
guide, Product Backlog is never complete and it keeps evolving or changing.
Change in product backlog may create need of new skill in development team.
Sometimes this need may be from totally different domain e.g a web
development team may need a member with analytics skillset. In this
scenario, how can we choose a development team which is self-organizing and
cross-functional while starting a project? Also how should we tackle if we
come across situation where there is lack of some skill due to change in
product backlog?
Thanks,
Sudeep

[[e-mail] [SCRUMDEVELOPMENT]]

Hi Andrew,

I would say the items sliced along functional lines.


Let's take an example where the project is migration project from database 1 to database 2. So we would be having a team with skillset of database 1, database 2 and which can do conversion and automization successfully. However, what if we come to know that some of the data in database 1 is not correct and we will have to pull correct data from source system. This source system is built with totally different technology and current team do not have skill to work on it. So how can we ensure that scrum development team is self-organized and cross-functional?


Thanks,
Sudeep Jamkar

[Gercel Silva [e-mail] [SCRUMDEVELOPMENT]]

Hi Sudeep!


Building a powerful team isn't an easy task. I recommend reading Jeff
Gothelf's article on this subject:
http://www.jeffgothelf
.com/blog/building-in-house-innovation-teams-small-collocated-dedicated-self-sufficient


You should have dedicated people with the right skills for the job. You can
look for developers that are generalizing specialists. Check out this
article about cross-functional developers:
http://agilemodeling.com/essays/generalizingSpecialists.htm


If you can't hire them you can always grow them inside your company. Having
slack time for research may help you with that:
http://www.jamesshore
.com/Articles/Business/Software%20Profitability%20Newsletter/Research%20Time.html


Maybe those links are helpful.


Cheers!
Gercel