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When forming a new Scrum team, it’s crucial to look beyond the foundational aspects of Scrum and consider the broader ecosystem of practices, mindsets, and collaborative tools that contribute to a team's long-term success. This article focuses on just a few of the many topics that can be crucial for a team's growth and sustainability.

In my experience, teams are often simply taught what Scrum is, but many essential elements are overlooked. This can happen due to the inexperience of the coach or Scrum Master; lack of time to properly prepare; or, unfortunately, a lack of buy-in from managers who push for training to be completed as quickly as possible. 

Addressing these additional areas can make a significant difference in setting up a team for success:

1. Team Culture and Psychological Safety

Creating a positive team culture where members feel safe to express their ideas, take risks, and provide constructive feedback is essential. Psychological safety fosters innovation and allows the team to learn from failures without fear. Establish ground rules for open communication and active listening to build trust from the start.

2. Defining Team Values and Working Agreements

Aligning on shared values helps guide the team’s interactions and decision-making processes. Establishing working agreements ensures everyone is clear on expectations for behavior, availability, and participation. These agreements should be reviewed periodically to adapt to evolving team dynamics.

Examples of working agreements include:

• The preferred days for team members to work on location versus remotely
• The agreed times for key Scrum events like daily stand-ups, sprint planning, and retrospectives
• How peer reviews of work will be conducted, such as dedicated review sessions or integrating feedback within daily work

These agreements create clarity and foster a shared commitment to team practices.

3. Effective Use of Collaboration Tools

Remote and hybrid teams need strong digital collaboration practices. Introduce collaboration tools to facilitate brainstorming sessions, create visual artifacts, and document shared learnings. Training the team on how to use these tools effectively can greatly enhance communication and efficiency.

4. Backlog Management and Prioritization Techniques

While backlog refinement is a core part of Scrum, diving deeper into prioritization frameworks like MoSCoW, the Kano Model, or Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) can help teams make more strategic decisions. Ensure that product owners are equipped to guide these practices effectively and that the team understands how to contribute.

Additionally, emphasize the importance of properly splitting backlog items vertically so that each item delivers incremental value. This approach ensures that each piece of work completed adds real user or business value. Define a clear definition of “done” to establish a shared understanding of completion criteria and maintain high-quality standards across the team.

The importance of story points should also be highlighted. While story points can aid in planning, their main strength lies in triggering discussions and helping the team share a common understanding of the complexity and scope of backlog items. This practice fosters better alignment and clarity across the team.

5. Agile Mindset Beyond Scrum

While Scrum is a popular framework, embracing the broader agile mindset—focusing on adaptability, continuous learning, and iterative improvement—helps the team apply principles flexibly. Introduce Lean concepts, Kanban practices for visualizing work in progress, and DevOps principles for fostering collaboration between development and operations.

Conclusion

Building a Scrum team involves more than simply implementing the basic rules of the framework. By focusing on these additional areas—team culture, working agreements, collaboration tools, and advanced backlog management—teams can develop a more holistic approach that supports sustainable growth and long-term success. Investing in these practices sets the stage for a resilient, collaborative, and high-performing team.

What other topics are important for you when you train new teams?