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Need clarification regarding a statement from Scrum Guide

Last post 10:59 am December 22, 2017 by Olivier Ledru
3 replies
03:02 am December 21, 2017

In Scrum Guide, there is a statement under "Development Team" section which states that:

"Development Teams are structured and empowered by the organization to organize and manage their own work."

Need some clarification regarding this statement as to what does Structured mean in this case? Does Organization decide the structure of the Development team?

As per my understanding, Development teams are self-organized and they themselves will choose how to form/structure the teams.

Please help.


07:26 pm December 21, 2017

Hi Alpana - 

A development team must contain all of the skills needed to take a product backlog item from back to releasable working software.  Generally, once the organization has provided those resources (structure,) then the team is empowered to decide how to do the work. 

Hope this helps!  

 


08:38 pm December 21, 2017

"Development Teams are structured and empowered by the organization to organize and manage their own work."

Need some clarification regarding this statement as to what does Structured mean in this case? Does Organization decide the structure of the Development team?

As per my understanding, Development teams are self-organized and they themselves will choose how to form/structure the teams.

If Development Teams are not structured and empowered by the organization to organize and manage their own work, then they are unlikely to become self-organizing. For example, they may instead form groupings which reflect particular disciplines or skill-silos (e.g. business analysis team, design team, coding team, test team), or which might require a project manager's control. In other words, without authoritative structuring and empowerment, teams may assume certain dependencies which compromise their ability to frame and meet a Definition of Done or integrate their work.

Established organizational culture can play a part in these assumptions. People may self-organize in flawed ways that reflect current expectations, comfort levels, conventions and norms. Hence deliberate "empowering and structuring" is used to overcome organizational gravity so proper self-organizing teams do in fact emerge. For example, a Scrum Master might deliberately coach people to value cross-functionality, and facilitate and guide those activities in which teams are formed.


10:59 am December 22, 2017

"Development Teams are structured and empowered by the organization to organize and manage their own work."

Need some clarification regarding this statement as to what does Structured mean in this case? Does Organization decide the structure of the Development team?

Scrum enforces that the Dev Team is self-organised.

Scrum says nothing about "manager-lead-design" or self-design. Scrum doesn't enforce that the Dev Team is also self-design, but it is of course a nice option.


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