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?
 

by Christian Bisson

Agile team cohesion is the seamless collaboration, effective communication, and shared goals and values among team members. I frequently prompt new teams to reflect on a time they thought things were going great; consistently, "the team" emerges as the primary factor contributing to that moment’s greatness.

Being intangible, team cohesion is often undervalued, with some viewing it as simply as an overhead. For example, team building activities, or even retrospectives that have a bit of fun included in them can be seen as a waste of time. Heck I’ve also been told by team members that it was an insult to their intellect! 

Despite that, the impact of team cohesion is far-reaching, offering substantial benefits to the team and the project at hand.

Enhanced Communication

Cohesive teams communicate more effectively, leading to smoother workflows through several key mechanisms:

• Shared Understanding: Team cohesion fosters a shared understanding of goals, objectives, and project/product requirements among team members. When everyone is on the same page, communication becomes more targeted and relevant.
• Open Communication Channels: In cohesive teams, trust and mutual respect is built over time which creates a culture of open communication. Team members feel comfortable expressing their ideas, concerns, and feedback. Not only does this transparency helps in addressing issues promptly, but it also provides the team with collective creativity to find solutions to whatever challenge they face.
• Adaptability to Change: In agile environments, where change is frequent, cohesive teams are more adaptable. Effective communication ensures that everyone is informed about changes promptly, and the team can collectively adjust its strategies and tasks to accommodate new requirements.

Increased Productivity

• Alignment of Efforts: Shared goals provide a common purpose that aligns the efforts of each team member. When everyone understands and commits to the same objectives, individual tasks and activities naturally complement one another, avoiding conflicts and redundancy.
• Motivation and Engagement: Having shared goals fosters a sense of shared ownership and commitment. Team members are motivated to contribute their best efforts when they see how their work contributes to the overall success of the team and the achievement of common objectives.
• Efficient Capacity Management: A united team optimises their capacity by ensuring that each team member focuses on tasks that align with the team's goals. This prevents duplication of efforts and ensures that time and expertise are utilised efficiently.
• Collaborative Problem-Solving: Shared goals encourage collaborative problem-solving. Team members are more likely to work together to overcome challenges and find innovative solutions when they share a common objective. This collective approach enhances problem-solving efficiency and effectiveness.
• Mutual Support and Knowledge Sharing: A united team promotes a culture of mutual support where team members readily assist each other. This support extends beyond task completion to knowledge sharing, where individuals leverage their strengths to help others, fostering continuous learning and skill development. Furthermore, this prevents “points of failure” where one member only can execute a certain task or has a certain expertise, lowering risks if team members leave the team or are missing.

Conclusion

Team cohesion is important, and it’s important for all members of the team to understand its value so that everyone contributes to it.

How do you actively contribute to your team's cohesiveness? Share your insights and any noteworthy team-building activities you've found effective.
 

by Mario Trentim

My earliest experience with remote work came in around 2010. At the time, I believed it would enable me to connect with project teams from around the globe. What I considered a novelty has now become a new normal for myself and project professionals everywhere. With this shift comes the necessity to rethink leadership, collaboration and teams.

A high-performing team can be defined as a group of people with clearly defined roles and complementary talents and skills, aligned with and committed to a common goal to innovate and deliver results.

The importance of teams is not about to diminish as digital transformation reshapes the notion of the workplace and how work gets done. On the contrary, the (digital) leadership role becomes increasingly demanding as a diverse workforce, including freelancers and partners, works from home.

It’s time that we adapt the essential characteristics of high-performing teams in the digital age:

Open and clear communication

 Maintaining an open-door policy can be a challenge in the modern workplace. Multiple notifications and meetings take a toll on productivity. High-performing virtual teams define ground rules for productive communication without abandoning social interactions. It’s possible to create water-cooler sessions, happy hours and the like to engage people on a personal level, while also keeping formal meetings focused on getting work done.

Solid team infrastructure

Virtual spaces enable people to connect with other teams, yet it’s necessary to have clear roles and responsibilities just like those that existed in physical work spaces. Many-to-many interactions cause distraction and waste. Leaders must clearly define team topologies, boundaries and interfaces.

Positive atmosphere

Working from home isn’t easy—and some people don’t get used to it. Trust, motivation and well-being are all deeply affected by remote work. So be sure to give those issues your attention by establishing the right incentives and offering feedback.

In a way, digital transformation empowers people to do more, extending and expanding capabilities. But it means nothing without strong leadership and clear communication.

How have you adapted your leadership style to best manage your virtual teams? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.