Scrum Teams—often referred to as development teams and responsible for the development of products and services—consist of a group of individuals who work on customer requirements to create deliverables for the project. It is important for the team to possess all the essential skills to carry out the work in the project.
The optimum size for a Scrum Team is six to ten members—large enough to ensure adequate skill sets and small enough to collaborate easily. However, a Scrum Team can be organized differently depending on the type of project and the type of organization. We are going to look at some of the most common ways in which a Scrum team could be organized within a Scrum project.
- Product Team – This is the easiest segregation of teams based on product or market. The team members have skill sets to match and develop the product. This team is particularly suited for the small feature set. Most start-ups use this team setup, as new products do not necessarily need complex features, to begin with, and could be developed and released with fewer features and more features added with a better understanding of the market. As the product develops, feature-based teams come into play.
- Feature Team –When the focus is on the feature set of a product, a Scrum team could be structured as a feature team. This team is required if the product is too large for a single team to enhance or when a single product base is divided into multiple market segments. A good example is custom cell-phones from supercar manufacturers.
- Component Team – A Scrum team could be structured as a component team when the focus is to improve components in a business. Components as a standalone feature do not deliver customer value. These components might require specialized members and expertise to work. An example would be apps developed for a specific phone which caters to a specific group of people.
- Customer Centric Teams –A single core product may have variants that different users might be using. A customer-centric team can help in focusing how different features can be integrated into the existing product helping differentiate a product from its competition.
- No Teams – One of the core principles of Scrum is Self-Organization. A Scrum team should be told what needs to be delivered but is not told how it should be delivered. That is why traditional team structures are no longer relevant for a self-organized Scrum team. A self-organized group will be best suited in a highly competitive and volatile market where constant changes are the norm.
These are the five different ways in which teams can be organized based on specific requirements.
