What is a Scrum Team? » Growing Scrum Masters

A Scrum Team is a complex problem-solving unit comprised of three roles.

Scrum Master
Product Owner
Development Team

A few people.

Ideally 5 to 7 people but it can be as high as 10 people on the upper limits.

They are brought together to solve complex problems and produce products and services that delight customers.

What makes the unit so unique is that oftentimes they won’t know the answer or solution upfront.

They work together to create the solution or solve the customer problem, with each member of the team bringing all their creativity, passion and expertise into a collaborative environment with the objective of creating something or solving something that has never been created or solved before.

Product Owner

The product owner acts as the CEO of the product and focuses their attention on making sure that the right thing is being built. They focus on whether the right problem is being solved and whether the right products and services are being built.

They are interested in what is being built, why it is being built, and when the product or service can be delivered to the customer.

Development Team

The developers are the people who build the product or service. They are focused on ensuring that the right thing is being built in the right way. These are the people who are building the solution and coming up with answers to the problems that are being addressed.

Outside of software engineering, this might be a team of graphic designers, writers or even a team of marketing specialists working on a specific problem or need.

These are the people with the specialist knowledge and skills necessary to create a new product or service, or simply to solve an existing problem. Because of their knowledge and skills, they decide how things are built or how the problem will best be solved.

Creative, resourceful, intelligent people who bring all their skills together and/or learn new skills as necessary in order to collaborate as a high-performing, Agile team.

Throughout the entire process, the development team is focused on quality. Focused on building or creating products and services that truly delight customers and stakeholders.

Scrum Master

The Scrum Master is the glue that binds the team together. The coach that works toward creating an environment where everybody within the Scrum Team can excel.

So, they are not focused exclusively on delivery. They are, instead, thinking about the constraints within a system.

They are thinking about how those constraints and impediments can be overcome and how they need to work within the organization to bring about the changes necessary for the team to succeed.

Sometimes that may be collaborating with people outside of the scrum team to bring about change that removes an impediment whilst at other times, it is working with the members of the scrum team to become a more cohesive, creative and collaborative unit.

Read ‘how does a Scrum Master differ from a Project Manager?’ for more insight into how Scrum Masters operate within Agile environments when compared to project managers in traditional waterfall-style project management environments.

These are the 3 primary roles that comprise a Scrum Team. They work in short, sharp cycles known as ‘sprints’ where each sprint leads to a valuable piece of work known as an ‘increment’. A working piece of software or a new feature or a new product evolution, depending on the environment.

Visit our Scrum Master section for more information on the Scrum Master role and visit our Product Owner section for more information on the Product Owner role.

Frequently Asked Scrum Master Questions

Frequently asked Training and Certification questions