Teamwork and autonomy

Scrum product development teams are purposefully small so that their members can interact and communicate efficiently throughout the day to get the work done. Even if there is more than one team working to develop the same product, each team will be small. This teamwork is considered essential for successful product development.

Responsibility for the work does not fall only on an individual, but on the team as a whole, which has the autonomy and is organized to decide how much can be done in each product development cycle, to define how to do it and to monitor its own progress.

In each cycle, the team itself plans the volume of work it believes it is capable of implementing, generating each part of the product to realize a well-defined business goal, which both guides and gives purpose to its work. The team members are equally responsible for carrying out the work, which encourages cooperation among them in pursuit of this objective. As such, the responsibility for work is not individual, but collective.

The team benefits from an environment that supports its work, which includes the availability of all the necessary means to carry it out and the organization’s confidence in its ability to make the decisions that are appropriate for it.

This autonomy helps teams that work with Scrum to create a sense of ownership over their work, so that the members of the same team encourage, demand, and help their colleagues to do their best so that, together, they realize the goals. This behavior naturally drives teams to be more motivated and productive, as well as encouraging greater adaptability.