5 Ways of Leading Highly Productive Scrum Teams | Review Guide 2022
Scrum is a Framework for increasing corporate value using a team-based approach. The Scrum Approach is essential for delivering successful projects, because teamwork is the key to achieve quality finished products. We can characterize Scrum team productivity by the Rugby game, where places use a team-based approach to win the game, which justifies the role of Scrum Framework.
The Scrum team contributes to the overall performance of product development by keeping track of requirements and end-product quality. It also aids in the acceleration of product development without undermining its effectiveness. A Scrum Master, on the other hand, plays a critical role in a scrum team; their job, responsibilities, and management style have a significant impact on overall product development and team performance.
Roles and Responsibilities of Scrum Master to Increase Scrum Team Productivity
A Scrum master’s responsibility is to make his or her team extremely productive so that they can achieve maximum results in the period allotted to them. A Scrum Master should be well-organized to effectively manage the team and capable of dealing with problems that arise during the production process. When the manufacturing process is carried on, we make sure that each team member’s time is adequately valued. We include daily activities like asking smart questions during the authoring of User Stories, ensuring developers have everything they need to complete the work and acting as a shield for the development team to avoid being questioned by stakeholders.
However, the Scrum Master’s and scrum team productivity also depends on the team members. We require self-motivated, cross-functional, and customer-focused team members for the team. The team must work together to support one another, rather than focusing solely on individual accomplishment. A Scrum Master must always keep the focus on the end-product in mind, leading their high-performing team in the right direction and letting them get to work.
Now, we will go through some of the Scrum Master’s primary responsibilities and see how they’re handled efficiently and effectively to increase scrum team productivity.
Building Stable Team
The backbone of enhancing the Scrum Team’s productivity index is a stable team. We prefer a small, precise team as it lasts longer and is easier to manage. Similarly, we choose highly motivated team members. We encourage our team members to backup each other as the teams working with unity outlive the product they’re working on. Workers assign tasks to their coworkers and develop skills over time. This replaces the idea of sending personnel to the job site and replacing the team as needed.
Unstable teams have a negative impact on team cohesion and performance. The longer a team stays together, the better they work with the increased understanding and improved skills. We make stable teams that stand behind the products they create and stand responsible for their work from start to finish and provide assistance when it is released to users. The ideal recommended size of team is three to nine as suggested by the Scrum.
Refinement and Estimate of the deliverable
We develop an Agile product by determining the actual user requirements to build a fully functional software. However, the Scrum master grooms the backlog of the product along with the customer/product owner, which involves going through each user requirement and estimating the time and effort it will require to complete. Our team fulfils user requirements by dividing the final goal into unit modules to work on those increments.
The grooming sessions accompanied by Scrum masters entails the role of Scrum Master function, such as a Scrum master can help with identifying user needs, not specified by the customer but that are necessary for the software product development. Working on epics (breaking large requirement into smaller manageable units), improvising poorly written user stories, managing product backlog, and estimating their time as well. Also, defining the acceptance criteria. Our team works on clarifying the requirements according to the team productivity. Also it has a continuous improvement mindset which comprises of the idea to improve something at the end of each sprint. Shaun Gamboa, a veteran scrum master and former innovation manager suggest a framework S.M.A.R.T, that makes sure that each user requirement is:
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time bound.
Swarming
Swarming, also known as one-by-one production, is a technique in which the entire team works on a high-priority project. Before any of the team member starts on their next user story, we focus on achieving one goal. This will guaranty that we are executing the work in the priority sequence specified in the Sprint. This technique is one of the most powerful techniques to boost scrum team productivity and enhances all aspects of a dynamic team.
Interruption Buffer Handling Pattern
Preplanning to handle interrupts before any interruption occurs increases the worth of that software product. As it will have the ability to deal with such circumstances. We can avoid scope changes by including interrupt buffers in all of the sprints. Running an application in production, before deployment it is mandatory to deal with its maintenance issues, add new features to it and a pattern to handle interruptions. It’s impossible to disregard the current technicalities and deploy the project. Therefore, interruption handling pattern holds its importance to increase team productivity.
Daily Standup Meetings
Scrum Master is responsible for checking the team’s daily progress at standup meetings, throughout the duration of a sprint. We offer Standups, that are fifteen-minute daily meetings. Scrum Master discusses the team’s performance as well as any problems that have arisen. After which our team tend to address the problem. We suggest to keep the Scrum master up to date on current progress. We suggest Scrum Master to do this by asking for any updates since the last meeting, current issues to be worked on, and issues hindering the progress.
Drawbacks of not having Scrum Team
Teams starting their journeys without proper supervision and lack of knowledge face downfall faster than the ones who work according to proper planning strategies. We tend to resolve common issues encountered in between product development lifecycles by basic behavioral patterns. Some of them include forcing unreliable deadlines for a project. Using unsustainable methods to reach goals earlier such as postponing the defects, giving priority to work over employees. These will lead to overtime and eventually poor performance. Similarly, allowing interrupts to outlook the goals of the project, relying on stretch goals to increase the throughput of the project.
Conclusion
The goal of every product development team is to obtain benefits. Product deployment at a reasonable cost and to deploy the project in specified time, meeting the user requirements. Following these patterns and applying them to a Scrum team will significantly increase scrum team productivity. There are a lot more development patterns to enhance the team productivity. Which include measuring performance metrics and deducing success rate, accordingly, avoiding multi-tasking and developing emergency procedures. Meanwhile, working on the above mentioned patterns will also yield enormous benefits. Also it will lead to a highly productive scrum team. However, the Scrum Master’s position is essential, as he or she serves as both a leader and a follower. We require special skills to not only listen to but also manage team difficulties by assisting team members.
