Mastering Professional Scrum: A Practitioner’s Guide to Overcoming Challenges and Maximizing the Benefits of Agility

2. Creating a Strong Team Foundation

Agile success starts with a strong team. Ideally that team is cohesive, cross-functional, and self-organizing, though most teams start out as a collection of individuals who have to learn how to work with each other to achieve their shared goals. Members of new Scrum Teams, especially those who are not used to working as part of a cross-functional team, often struggle at first to produce “Done” Product Increments in every Sprint. In this chapter, we consider how teams can overcome these challenges.

Forming a Team Identity

You cannot simply put a group of people together, tell them “You are a team,” and expect them to achieve great things. Forming a team means making an investment in bringing a group of people ...