Characteristics of Self-Managing Scrum Teams

As we mentioned previously, self-managing teams determine what to do, when and how the work should be done and who does it. This provides a nice framework to recognize if your team is actually self-managing, or is getting undue direction from outside the team:

• The team manages their work by deciding what they should be doing on a day to day basis:
  • Are you operating toward clear goals; does your team use the Product Goal and Sprint Goal to guide their decisions?
  • Does your team focus on the value being delivered?
  • Does your team determine how best to fulfill the PBIs; does the team decide what they should be doing without direction from outside the team?
• The team manages their work by deciding when they should do certain activities. They do this without outside direction:
  • Does the team select a realistic and challenging amount of work for the Sprint and does the team get the work to Done?
  • Does the team choose what and when to release?
• How the members of the team interact with each other gives clues to whether it is a self-managing team:
  • Do the developers decide who picks up the work?
  • Is the team collaborating to solve problems?
  • Does everyone on the team have a voice?
  • Do they trust each other?
  • Do team members work with and help each other? 
• How the team manages their work practices is a good indicator of whether the team is self-managing:
  • Do they define and improve their quality practices?
  • Do they continually improve their adoption/implementation of Scrum? 
  • Is the work that’s being done transparent?
  • Are they dedicated to doing the work well?
  • Do they “live” the Scrum Values?