Considerations for a New Team

Scrum Team Size and Structure

MUST – The team has all the skills necessary to create value each Sprint (3)
Are the skills siloed into specialisms, or are the team members multi-skilled (or T-shaped)?

Individual expertise: gained through training, education, and experience
Relational knowledge: An understanding of how to work together to integrate individual knowledge to achieve specified goals
Embedded knowledge: The core technologies on which your group’s performance depends, such as customer databases or R&D technologies
Metaknowledge: The awareness of where to go to get critical information

How do they like to communicate day to day?
Do they have any information radiators to aid their communication?
What are the understood response times for communications internally and externally?

Consider these six criteria

Competence: Does this person have the techincal competence and experience to do the job effectively?
Judgment: Does this person exercise good judgment, especially under pressure or when faced with making sacrifices for the greater good?
Energy: Does this team member bring the right kind of energy to the job, or is she burned out or disengaged?
Focus: Is this person capable of setting priorities and sticking to them, or prone to riding off in all directions?
Relationships: Does this individual get along with others on the team and support collective decision making, or is he difficult to work with?
Trust: Can you trust this person to keep her word and follow through on commitments?

Lack of…	Symptoms
Focus	The group can’t clearly define its priorities, or has too many. Resources are spread too thin, leading to frequent crises and firefighting. People are rewarded for their ability to put out fires, not for devising enduring solutions.
Discipline	People exhibit great variation in their levels of performance. Employees don’t understand the negative consequences of inconsistency. People make excuses when they fail to make commitments.
Innovation	The group uses internal benchmarks to measure performance. Improvements in products and processes unfold slowly and incrementally. Employees are rewarded for maintaining stable performance, not for pushing the envelope.
Teamwork	Team members compete with one another and protect turf rather than work together to achieve collective goals. People are rewarded for creating fiefdoms.
Sense of urgency	Teams members ignore the needs of external and internal customers. Complacency reigns, revealed in beliefs such as ‘We’re the best and always have been’ and ‘It doesn’t matter if we respond immediately’