Scrum Team and Standard of Work

Standardized work is a collection and implementation of the best practices known at that moment. We discussed Standard of Work for Product Owner and Scrum Master in earlier articles. I also gave you a template of the checklist with activities for these two important players of Scrum.

Third leg of Scrum stool

As we all know, Scrum is often referred to as three-legged stool. The three legs being the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and the Team. The third leg, the Scrum Team, is charged with the responsibility to build and deliver the product functionality. Everyone on the Scrum team must be rowing in one direction to deliver this in a timely fashion to the customers.

Rowing Team – every effort in one direction

Let’s look at the typical activities that the team must carry out.

Daily

Attend the daily Scrum, on time and in person.
Come prepared at the daily scrum with your updates.
Provide you updates at the daily scrum and listen to others’ updates.
All team members should answer “the three questions”.
If, for some reason, you can not attend the daily scrum, please reach out to a ‘buddy’ and ask her to take your updates to the team. [Do not send you updates in an email, that should be the last resort! ]
Adhere to the Office Hours agreed upon as a Team. Let the team know if you are unavailable during those office hours for any reason.
Work (swarm) on the highest priority stories.
Show all work on the Scrum board.
Update tasks with hours remaining.
Seek out opportunities to help your team members and/or swarm on driving the Stories to completion.
Ensure development standards are followed.
As soon as a Story is Done, demonstrate it to Product Owner to get her Acceptance and mark it as ‘DONE’.
Adhere to DoD before marking a Story as Done.
Learn to say ‘No’. Use the ‘No’ repertoire.
Ensure that the WIP limits are followed.
Make it Fun 🙂

Weekly

Identify ways to get better. Collect ideas for Sprint Retrospective or create improvement stories. Seek out opportunities to get that 1% improvement [ The Rich Employee by James Altucher ]
If required, represent your team at the Scrum of Scrum event, bringing team’s updates and challenges to the community.

Each Sprint

Participate in Sprint Planning. Push back if the Story is not READY; not allowing it to get into a Sprint.
Get into sprint. Participate in Backlog Refinement.
Avoid the group thinking and provide your honest, unbiased estimate based on your knowledge and experience. Be comfortable with confrontation and agree to disagree.
In the daily standup. Participate in the Demo and Retrospective.
Identify opportunities for improving how work is done. Less with more done.
Create stories for improvements to be undertaken by the team.
Communicate improvements to Agile Coach or Process Owner for improvements beyond the control of the team.
Ensure all stories & tasks have a good description and validation.
Ensure all stories/features/epics have sizes.
Make a sprint commitment that you believe in. Work to achieve the commitment.