What Makes a Great Scrum Team

Chances are you’ve implemented or are currently implementing Scrum with the goal of increasing your teams’ productivity and delivering more value to your organization. But not every Scrum team is a high-performing one. In this article, we’ll explore the characteristics of a great Scrum team—with a special focus on the Developers (or DEVs, as they’re often called).

Let’s start at the beginning: what is a Scrum team? The Scrum team is the core unit of Scrum—a group of professionals working together to achieve the Product Goal and create value for the organization. It consists of a Product Owner (PO), a Scrum Master (SM), and the Developers (DEV). There are no sub-teams or hierarchies.

Small by Design

A typical Scrum team has fewer than ten people. In the Agile community, you’ll often hear that smaller teams are more productive—but why is that? One explanation is the Ringelmann Effect. Back in 1913, French agricultural engineer Max Ringelmann ran an experiment asking individuals and groups to pull on a rope. He found that the more people there were in a group, the less effort each person made. Two key factors have been identified as causes: loss of motivation and loss of coordination. Later studies—like Ingham et al. (1974), as well as research by Quantitative Software Management—have backed up these findings. 

What does this mean for you? Keep your teams small.

Highly Communicative

This one might seem obvious, but it’s absolutely essential: every team member must communicate well.

Picture this: the PO adds an item to the backlog. The DEVs read it but aren’t 100% clear on what’s expected. Still, they don’t want to push back, so they move forward based on assumptions. At the Sprint Review, it turns out the work didn’t meet the need, and an entire Sprint was spent delivering something with no value—all because of poor communication. Or imagine a DEV struggling with a piece of code. They don’t want to bother anyone, so they spend the whole day stuck on something a teammate could’ve solved in an hour.

Lesson? Good communication isn’t optional—it’s critical.

Cross-Functional

A strong Scrum team—especially a strong group of developers—has all the skills it needs to deliver a usable increment and meet the Sprint Goal. DEVs don’t limit themselves to job titles or narrow responsibilities; they operate as a single, collaborative unit to build the product.

Self-Managing

A good Scrum Master believes in self-management and understands its power. A self-managing team doesn’t rely on external control or micromanagement. They make their own decisions and estimate their own workload. When a team reaches a high level of self-management, it’s clear: they know how to collaborate effectively and make things happen.

Stable

In a stable Scrum team, members stay together over time. This allows them to focus on a single product and avoid splitting their attention across multiple projects. Stable teams consistently deliver value faster than constantly changing ones. Building a high-performing team takes time. Members need space to learn how to work together and self-manage effectively—and that can’t happen if the team composition keeps shifting.

Now that you have a clearer picture of what makes a strong Scrum team, one question remains:

How can we develop these characteristics in a Scrum team?

There’s a wealth of content online to help you get started. But if you want expert support, we offer several resources. If you have a few days and want to learn how to apply Scrum in your organization—or improve how you’re already using it—join one of our Certified Scrum Master courses. We also offer in-house trainings on a variety of topics to help teams kick-start their Agile journey. Need something even more tailored? Check out our consulting and coaching services. We’d love to help. Let’s talk.