FORMING THE SCRUM TEAM
Forming a scrum team with the right size and skills is important in the delivery of any product. This is a critical part of the initiation phase of an Agile project. There are multiple deliverables within each sprint, and team members will need to be self-organising with a breadth of skills.
Scrum team formation is primarily managed by the team’s product owner. The product owner carries the vision of the organisation and as the individual responsible for the product backlog, they should have the greatest insight into the skills required to deliver prioritised features. Since the scrum master is one of the first team members identified, most product owners will engage this individual in identifying skills and the people who can best deliver
Within Scrum teams, teams members are cross-functional with the specific technical skills to complete the product. Scrum Team members also support the rest of the team. The best teams are goal oriented and have 6 team members, give or take three. Unlike traditional project teams, the testing resources are not within silos’ in a separate part of the organisation. As a cross-functional team, the development team consists of developers, testers, solution architects, and all of the other roles required to complete the product.
Testing is an important step in the delivery of shippable features and as such will need to be planned and executed to deliver the product. These shippable features will then need to be approved by the product owner during the sprint review ceremony.
Testers are involved throughout the project, and play crucial roles within the sprint and project ceremonies. These ceremonies include the:
- Backlog Development,
- Sprint Planning
- Sprint Review, and
- Sprint Retrospective.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course: