We always have questions regarding how Self-organization work in Scrum or How Scrum support Self-Organization.

Self-Organization doesn’t mean team is allowed to do whatever they wish or self-organization is not free-flow freedom to team.

A Scrum team expected to self-organize within given boundary and defined rules or working agreements established by organization. These boundaries, rules or working agreements depends upon organizational structure, culture and should be made visible to everyone.

Can a group of people self-organize without having a purpose (goal), authority and defined boundary?

So a $64000 question, how a team can self-organize if they don’t know:

·        What Goal need to be achieved?

·        What are the authority people have to make required decision?

·        What constraints team have to follow?

I believe people need a motivational Purpose, Autonomy (Authority) and clear Boundary which guide them to become a great self-organized team.

Team must have a Purpose for self-organization:

To self-organize as a team people need to have purpose what they need to achieve. People need to understand what they need to achieve by building a self-organised team. Purpose will guide the people what skills a self-organized team need to have. A self-organized team need be cross functional by having all required skills to deliver integrated Done Product Increment.

If team don’t have the overarching Goal then it’s like they are left in forest without any given direction and where to go from there.

To achieve the Business Agility, Organization must have a clear Product Vision which let the people understand what customer segment product is targeting and what customer needs product will fulfill. Organization should have defined window of opportunity within which team need to deliver the MVP to get maximum benefit or change the direction accordingly.

Team must have Autonomy (Authority) for self-organization:

To self-organize as a team, people must have the authority to make decision about how team will work to achieve the purpose. No one should dictate them about how they need to work. Team should have authority to decide how much work they can take to keep sustainable pace to deliver high quality product. Team should have authority to do experiments to continuously improve the way of working.

In lack of authority team will be always dependent on the Manager and will always look toward manager for decision making. Moreover team will lack commitment. Team will always feel this is not their commitment.

So, manger need to delegate authority to team to make their own decision, this will make team more committed, focus on the result and take accountability of outcome. Better the authority of decision making better team will able to self-organize.      

 As per Scrum Guide:

·        Development Teams are structured and empowered by the organization to organize and manage their own work.

·        Scrum Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional. Self-organizing teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team.

·        Development Team are self-organizing. No one (not even the Scrum Master) tells the Development Team how to turn Product Backlog into Increments of potentially releasable functionality;

Team must have clear Boundary for self-organization:

To self-organize as a team, people need to have clear boundary, rules or working agreements established by organization. Team should know what type of decision team can make and for what decision they need to go to manager. Guidelines should be clear while leaving enough flexibility for creativity. Boundary related with Product Budget, Window of Opportunity should be clearly defined and transparent to team.

For team to self-organize in best possible way, rules and guidelines should be minimum and only as necessary to work as rail-guards.

Scrum framework define simple guidelines of 3 Roles, 5 Events and 3 Artifacts to self-organize team and leave enough room to define team’s own best practice and process which may be suitable for teams at particular time for particular situation.    

How Scrum provide Purpose and Boundary to promote self-organization:    

1.      Scrum Roles, Events, artifacts have specific purpose and boundary which help Scrum team to self-organize.

2.      Scrum Team has only 3 roles (Product Owner, Development Team, and Scrum Master), each role has specific purpose and boundary within which Scrum team self-organize to complement each role to achieve the purpose within given time box of Scrum Event.

3.      Scrum team work with product mindset (instead of Project mindset) and team self-organize to deliver a working Done Product Increment every sprint.

4.      Scrum team craft high level product road-map, which provide purpose to Scrum team about what need to be achieved in given window of opportunity.

5.      Every Scrum event have a Purpose, which helps scrum team to self-organize to achieve the purpose in boundary implicitly specified by Sprint Event time-box.

6.      Sprint provide the Purpose to deliver Integrated Done Product Increment not later than by end of Sprint, which helps team to self-organize.

7.      In Sprint, Development team self-organize how they will achieve the Sprint goal, how they will work with product owner for product backlog refinement, how they will work with the stakeholders and Product Owner in case they need more information on the requirement.  

8.      In Sprint Planning, Scrum team craft Sprint Goal which is the Purpose Development Team commit to achieve within the boundary of Sprint. Scrum team and the Development team self-organize to achieve the Sprint goal within duration of Sprint.

9.      In Sprint Planning, Scrum team self-organize to craft the Sprint Goal, self-organize to select the product backlog items to achieve Sprint Goal and self—organize to come up with a plan for achieving Sprint Goal.

10.  Daily Scrum, Provide the purpose to team to work on next most important item and address the next most important impediments which help in achieving Sprint goal, Development team self-organize every day in time box of 15 minutes to create daily plan about the work for next 24 hours.

11.  In Daily Scrum Development team self-organize to make daily commitments by inspecting the daily progress and adapting plan for next 24 hours.

12.  In Sprint review, Scrum team self-organize to conduct the event to be productive and with the purpose of getting valuable feedback from stakeholders within given time box. Scrum team self-organize to work closely with stakeholders to inspect what has been achieved with the Purpose to learn more about stakeholder’s expectations and bigger picture of product.

13.  In Sprint Review, Development team self-organize how they will collaborate with stakeholders to conduct Sprint Review event in exceptional scenario of product owner non availability due to some emergency. In this case team self-organization play an important role and this will also show the trust level between Development team and Product Owner.

14.  Sprint Retrospective provide the purpose to inspect team process for delivering quality product increment, Development team self-organize how they will implement identified improvement in next sprint. Development team self-organize about inspecting DOD and adapt changes to improve quality of the Product Increment.

Remember: Self-organization can’t be achieved overnight and take time. When team work together, they will learn more about each other, about stakeholders, about the Purpose of the Product and what Minimum Viable Product (MVP) team need to deliver within given Window of Opportunity to get maximum benefits for organization.

Management (LEADERS) play key roles to help team self-organize by providing motivational PURPOSE (Goal), delegating the AUTHORITY to take decision within clearly defined BOUNDARY.  

Conclusion: To become a great self-organized team people need to understand the Purpose which they need to achieve as team, Authority about taking decision regarding how they will work as team to achieve the Product Vision within specified Boundary, rules or working agreements.