What does self organizing Scrum team mean?

Question

What does the "self organizing" in "self organizing Scrum team" mean?

Answer 1

See this article for a good explanation. This quote explains the heart of it:

Self-organization does not mean that workers instead of managers engineer an organization design. It does not mean letting people do whatever they want to do. It means that management commits to guiding the evolution of behaviors that emerge from the interaction of independent agents instead of specifying in advance what effective behavior is.

The team approaches a project, and, based on the project at hand, decides how best to allocate its resources to take advantage of each team member's various strengths.

Answer 2

What does the "self organizing" in "self organizing Scrum team" mean?

It means this: No one – not even the ScrumMaster - tells the Team how to turn Product Backlog into increments of shippable functionality. The Team figures this out on its own. Each Team member applies his or her expertise to all of the problems. The synergy that results improves the entire Team’s overall efficiency and effectiveness.

Reference: Scrum Guide

Answer 3

A self-organising team is one in which every member of the team is working towards some shared goal. Team members collaborate to reach the goal, valuing the team's output over their own individual productivity.

A self-organizing team tends to be:

• trusting of each other's motives and motivation
• helpful, respectful, communicative and transparent
• collaborative with other teams
• interested in delivery and feedback
• goal-focused instead of productivity-focused.

The project manager's roles in a self-organising team tend to be:

• making sure that the team has people with sufficient skills to succeed
• helping them be aware of and understand information coming from elsewhere in the company
• reporting the team's progress, successes, risks and obstacles to other audiences
• getting stuff out of the team's way wherever possible (see Servant Leadership).

A self-organizing team is usually pretty good at getting things done, blasting through obstacles, communicating issues outside of their control and generally provides a great project experience for anyone using them. See also: Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing - you're looking for that last one.

Answer 4

It’s a flexible, responsive team that is allowed to make important decisions on its own in a preset framework. Usually, the management decides on the goals and overall deadlines for a project. Then it's up to the team to find the best ways to attain these goals, distribute tasks among the members, plan and evaluate their own work at the interim deadlines they set. Team leadership is not set in stone. Usually, the Scrum master changes regularly, so that each team member has a chance to try this role.

The main aim of such teams is to encourage the self-actualization of every worker. When team members can make a difference, they feel inner responsibility and motivation to perform. This way, self-organization promotes innovation and a good team morale, both of which look like solid benefits. By the way, we recently published a blog post explaining the benefits of the concept in more detail. You can check it out here, if you are interested.

Answer 5

• A self-organizing team in Self organize scrum team means each and every team member is responsible for their individual module, Scrum master role is minimal/existed in the team.
• Self organizing scrum team means low ceremony and trying to work as a collective whole so titles mean little.