Team Members

The second role in the Scrum team is the 'Project Team' itself. This is a cross-functional group of people with all the different skills that are needed to turn requirements into something that is an increment of potentially shippable functionality. So it often consists of an analyst, designer, QA person, a coder, a documentation person, all the skills that are needed to turn the requirements into something that is done. This is the team that actually commits to the Product Owner what they'll do every iteration and then does it. At the end of the iteration they show it to the Product Owner and then the Product Owner can decide what to do next.

There are often centres of excellence in software engineering organisations that group people of unique highly specialised skills, like usability engineering, database experts, security experts and systems architects. When these people's skills are needed they should become part of the team. That is they're not outside experts who simply give advice but they become part of the team for those iterations when they're needed to build architecture, to build infrastructure or to work on the database. They are either doing the work or mentoring, monitoring and guiding the people on the team who are doing the work. The key differentiator here is that they are no longer a chicken. We get them in at the start of an iteration and they commit along with the team to get something done by the end of that iteration. So for a short time they become a pig.

Role Summary:

• Cross-functional
• Seven plus or minus two members
• Selects the iteration goal and specifies work results
• Has the right to do everything within the boundaries of the project guidelines to reach the iteration goal
• Organises itself and its work
• Demos work results to the Product Owner and stakeholders