Working Collaboratively on a Scrum Team as a Developer
Developers are the heart of a Scrum Team. As you step into this accountability, you'll find yourself engaging with other creative problem-solvers in a team dedicated to continuous learning and creating valuable and quality products for customers.
These core tenets of the Developer Accountability are addressed in the following collection of resources that contain practical ideas and tips that you can apply immediately.
Bookmark or save and return to those resources often; you can find your saved resources in your Scrum.org profile under Saved Content.
The Developer's Accountabilities
Learn more about the Developer's Accountabilities, what it takes to be a Professional Scrum Developer and some common myths about Developers on a Scrum Team.
The Developers are the Scrum Team members that create the product. They have specific accountabilities to the team. Learn about these accountabilities and debunk a few myths about being a Developer on a Scrum Team.
What do Developers on a Scrum Team do?
Developers are the beating heart of the Scrum Team because without them nothing would get done. These resources help you understand how Developers function with others within as well as external to the Scrum Team.
The Scrum Team is a small unit of professionals focused on attaining the Product Goal. Scrum Teams consist of a Product Owner, Scrum Master and Developers. Each has a clear set of accountabilities. Learn more about the Scrum Team, accountabilities, responsibilities and why these aren’t called “roles.”
It is important to remember that a Developer is not necessarily a software developer. They can focus on any type of product work whether software or not and any aspect of helping to design, build, test or ship the product. The specific skills needed by the Developers are often broad and will vary ba...
As a new Scrum Master you’ll want to get to know your team, the people outside of your team that you’ll work with, including stakeholders to help the team improve at delivering value. To help you get started, here are some questions and tips to consider when you join a new team as a Scrum Master and suggestions on building collaborative relationships.
Why create a team working agreement?
A team working agreement provides an agreed upon set of guidelines for a Scrum Team to follow, so everyone understands what is expected as they work together in pursuit of delivering value. A team can use a working agreement to help them work toward self-manag...
This book is for anyone who works with Scrum Teams or wants to become more effective as a Scrum Team member or leader.
What is Scrum?
Scrum is a lightweight framework that helps people, teams and organizations generate value through adaptive solutions for complex problems.
Scrum is defined completely in the Scrum Guide by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland and is maintained independently of any company. The Scrum Guide is translated and available in over 30 languages.
In Scrum, empiricism refers to the idea that solving complex problems, or doing complex work, can only be done using an exploratory process rather than relying on predetermined plans. Learn about empiricism and complex work. Explore why trust is important for empiricism to thrive.
For agility to thrive, the culture of the organization must support the fundamental concepts of agility. The Scrum Values - Focus, Respect, Openness, Commitment, and Courage - create an environment where empiricism, self-management and continual improvement are more successful.
The five Scrum Events provide regular opportunities for enacting the Scrum pillars of Inspection, Adaptation and Transparency. In addition, they help teams keep aligned with the Sprint and Product Goals, improve Developer productivity, remove impediments and reduce the need to schedule too many additional meetings.
Learn about the three Scrum artifacts and their commitments: Product Backlog and Product Goal; Sprint Backlog and Sprint Goal; Increment and Definition of Done. Explore some common antipatterns and myths that surround these artifacts.
What does it mean to be a cross-functional Scrum Team?
A cross-functional team is a group of people who have the skills necessary to achieve a common goal. A Scrum Teams needs cross-functional skills and diverse perspectives so that collectively they have all the skills they need to deliver valuable product Increments.
Ideally, a Scrum Team has all the skills it needs to deliver a valuable product Increment. However, in practice, this happens rarely. Developing complex products for a complex world requires skills that even highly cross-skilled teams will lack at times. For instance, if they have questions about le...
How does a Scrum Team plan a Sprint?
Scrum Teams use Sprints to help them focus on creating and delivering valuable product Increments. Sprint Planning helps them to create an achievable plan for a successful Sprint.
Creating a Sprint Goal
Scrum Teams form their Sprint Goal to help them focus on the things they need to do to progress toward their Product Goal. Their Sprint Goal helps them to decide what to work on during the Sprint, and how they will assess their success during the Sprint.
The Sprint Goal is the single objective for the Sprint. Although the Sprint Goal is a commitment by the Developers, it provides flexibility in terms of the exact work needed to achieve it. The Sprint Goal also creates cohesiveness and focus, encouraging the Scrum Team to work together rather than on...
Customer outcomes are the results that customers and users experience when they use a product. This piece describes the characteristics of customer outcomes as well as how to define them.
User role modeling is a lightweight way to categorize what roles users take when interacting with your product. Knowing these roles and how they impact how the user interacts with the product gives the Scrum Team more context when creating and refining their Product Backlog items, especially if ...
Aligning Sprint Goals with customer outcomes means stating the goal in terms of reducing a satisfaction gap, which is the difference between a customer’s current experience and their desired experience. A Scrum Team reduces a satisfaction gap by improving a specific and measurable customer outcome. ...
Forecasting Work
Scrum Teams form their Sprint Goal to help them focus on the things they need to do to progress toward their Product Goal. Their Sprint Goal helps them to decide what to work on during the Sprint, and how they will assess their success during the Sprint.
Scrum Team can use forecasting and release planning as a guide for delivering a product through small incremental and frequent releases rather than big bang product launches.
This video explains Monte Carlo Simulation. Monte Carlo Simulations can be used to make probabilistic forecasts. This video explains how it can be used in the context of product delivery.
Creating a Sprint Plan
A Scrum Team creates a Sprint Plan to help them decide what they need to do to achieve their Sprint Goal. In the course of discussing the work they think they need to do, they confirm that the Sprint Goal is really what they need to achieve. They then come to a consensus, as best they can, on what they need to do to achieve it.
This learning series discusses the importance of developing and delivering valuable product Increments in order to improve the outcomes that its users and customers experience. Scrum Teams deliver product Increments and measure the results to understand what customers want or need.
Every Sprint starts with Sprint Planning where the Scrum Team determines what they plan to accomplish during the course of the Sprint. They make this transparent by creating a Sprint Backlog including the Sprint Goal, the selected Product Backlog Items and the Developers’ plan for delivering the work
About Sprint Planning
Event Purpose:
Initiates the Sprint by laying out the work to be performed for the Sprint. Output is a Sprint Backlog (Sprint Goal + selected PBIs + Plan)
Facilitator Focus:
Enable a collaborative and transparent environment with a clear objective. Keep the team f...
There are release planning techniques that Scrum Teams can use that are complementary to Scrum. This content includes some techniques and the benefits and challenges with each.
The Sprint Backlog represents what the Developers plan to accomplish during the Sprint. Learn about the Sprint Backlog, Sprint Goal, how to use Sprint Backlogs effectively and investigate common antipatterns with the Sprint Backlog.
How does a Scrum Team work within a Sprint towards the Sprint Goal?
During the Sprint, the Scrum Team works collaboratively toward their Sprint Goal.
To help ensure that the work the Scrum Team delivers is valuable, they need to work together, share ideas and responsibilities and have team ownership while also working closely with their stakeholders, including customers and end users.
To keep work moving smoothly, the Developers get together for 15 minutes every day to focus on the Sprint Goal and to plan the upcoming day’s work. During the Daily Scrum, they identify any issues they need help in resolving, ask for help when they need it and adjust the Sprint Backlog, if necessary.
Scrum events create regularity and transparency and minimize the need for meetings not defined in Scrum. The events are the Daily Scrum, Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective, and the Sprint. Often, Scrum events don’t go as planned. Good, lightweight facilitation can help the Scrum Te...
By David Spinks, Glaudia Califano, Patricia Kong - Scrum requires healthy collaboration, not just between the members of the Scrum Team, but also between the Scrum Team and its stakeholders to gather feedback and input. Collaboration is the heart of thriving Scrum Teams, but most available resources...
There are many benefits to optimizing the flow of work in Scrum by leveraging Kanban practices and this guide is designed to enhance and expand the practices of Scrum and assumes the reader is operating a process using the Scrum framework.
As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Hiren Doshi discusses a model to assess and control unplanned work that may come up during a Sprint and reviewing its impact during the Sprint Review. 3:12 Minutes
Using a “Definition of Done” to eliminate waste and deliver a valuable product Increment
In Scrum, partially completed work (work that does not meet the team’s Definition of Done) is waste that prevents the team from delivering something in the product Increment that might have been more valuable.
The Definition of Done describes the quality standards for the Increment. Learn why getting to Done is so important, what undone work is, if it’s okay to show work that isn’t done to stakeholders, can you present undone work at the Sprint Review and what’s the difference between the DoD and Definition of Ready or acceptance criteria.
Un-done work is work that does not conform to the Definition of Done and is therefore unfinished. It represents time the Scrum Team spent creating something that delivered no value. Learn what un-done work is, what causes it and techniques for eliminating it.
How do Developers work with Stakeholders?
Stakeholders are important sources of information who Developers need input from to create valuable product Increments. Stakeholders also provide good sources of feedback on the product Increment.
Scrum encourages frequent collaboration with stakeholders, and customers in particular. Understanding how to identify and learn about the challenges that key stakeholders face will help the Scrum Team better deliver the value they are seeking.
Scrum Teams use feedback as a compass to improve and innovate their product. Here are 5 strategies to help teams gather better feedback.
By understanding its customers and users, a Scrum Team can identify opportunities, be more innovative and create products that people need and use. Here are different techniques ways to do this.
The Sprint Review is a working meeting where the Scrum Team presents their completed work to stakeholders and asks for feedback. The Scrum Team and stakeholders discuss the progress made toward the Product Goal, emerging changes in the business or technical climate and collaborate on what to do next
The Sprint Review is an opportunity for everyone to inspect the progress the Scrum Team has made toward achieving the Product Goal. It is an opportunity to examine the product Increment to see if it has delivered value to customers and reduced the size of the satisfaction gap.As the Scrum Team and i...
How does a Scrum Team improve how it works together to achieve its goals?
All teams have room for improving how they work together. Scrum provides the Sprint Retrospective for the Scrum Team to inspect how the last Sprint went with regards to individuals, interactions, processes, tools, and their Definition of Done.
The Sprint Retrospective is the last event in the Sprint. Unlike other Scrum Events where the focus is on inspecting and adapting ways to improve the product, the Sprint Retrospective is a place for the Scrum Team to inspect and adapt their working practices.
There are many reasons why Scrum Teams struggle to deliver value. To be more effective, Scrum Teams should better understand customer needs, improve their cross-functionality, be empowered to make decisions, improve their ability to focus, and increase their feedback cycles.
Scrum Master job descriptions typically include the following: “Help remove impediments for the team” or “Accountable for removing impediments”. Organizations clearly find impediment removal to be an important aspect of the role. But what is meant by impediments? Should a Scrum Master remove all the...
Scrum Teams need to make decisions all the time. Helping teams reach a decision effectively, and gaining necessary buy-in from all team members can be challenging, especially when team members are unclear on who has the final say in making it. Understanding the decision rule, how a decision is made and whose input is required, is necessary because ambiguity in the decision process causes confusion and frustration.
Additional Resources for Software Developers using Scrum
Continuous Delivery allows Scrum Teams to deliver valuable product Increments to customers faster in a sustainable and reliable way.
Scrum Teams deliver value to customers in product Increments. Product stability is vital as each Increment builds on the last.
