The Development Team is one of the three accountabilities defined in Scrum, alongside the Product Owner and the Scrum Master. It consists of professionals who are collectively responsible for delivering Product Backlog Items and creating a potentially releasable Increment at the end of each Sprint.
Development Teams are self-organizing (they decide how best to accomplish the work) and cross-functional (they have all the skills needed to deliver a complete Increment from concept to release).
Practical Relevance
- Self-organization: The team determines how Sprint Goals are achieved, without detailed external instructions.
- Shared accountability: No single backlog item belongs to one individual – the team as a whole is accountable.
- Customer value: Each Increment produced is a step toward a usable product.
- Continuity: Stable team composition increases productivity, while frequent changes disrupt flow.
- Focus: Members should ideally be dedicated full-time to a single product, avoiding split attention across multiple projects.
Real-World Examples
Software Development Team: Developers, testers, UX designers, and DevOps specialists collaborate to deliver a new feature. Instead of assigning tasks top-down, team members pull work and adapt continuously.
Impact: A feature can be developed, tested, and integrated within one Sprint.
Cross-disciplinary Hardware Team: In an IoT company, the Development Team includes electronics engineers, software developers, and mechanical designers.
Impact: Functional prototypes are delivered in short cycles, with rapid learning from real-world tests.
Banking Project: A Scrum Team of eight members covers a broad skill set. Although each member has a specialty, everyone shares responsibility for achieving the Sprint Goal.
Impact: Knowledge is spread across the team, silos are avoided, and delivery continues smoothly even if someone is unavailable.
Implementation in Practice
- Team size: Ideally 3 to 9 members. Smaller teams risk lacking skills; larger ones struggle with communication and self-organization.
- Focus: Members should focus on one product rather than splitting across multiple teams.
- Composition: Cross-functional – all skills needed for delivery are present within the team, reducing external dependencies.
- Stability: Frequent changes to team composition reduce productivity. Changes should never occur mid-Sprint.
- Ways of working: Development Teams self-organize. The Scrum Master supports by removing impediments and coaching but does not assign tasks.
- Transparency and ownership: Progress and impediments are surfaced in Scrum events (Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Retrospective).
Anti-Patterns
- Mini-waterfall inside the team: Work is done sequentially (e.g., development first, testing later) instead of incrementally and collaboratively.
- Wrong team size: Too small or too large teams reduce effectiveness.
- Part-time members: Split responsibilities across projects undermine focus and velocity.
- Individual accountability: Assigning items to individuals instead of fostering team accountability undermines Scrum principles.
- Frequent team changes: Constant turnover prevents team formation and learning curves.
CALADE Perspective
At CALADE, the Development Team is seen as the engine of Scrum: it creates customer value and drives sustainable product development. We emphasize the importance of cross-functional, stable, and self-organizing teams. Our work with organizations focuses on enabling the right conditions: clear product orientation, reduced context switching, and collective accountability. In transformation projects, we also demonstrate how Scrum Teams can successfully develop not only software but also hardware, services, or organizational solutions.
Related Terms
- Product Owner – responsible for maximizing product value
- Scrum Master – ensures Scrum is understood and enacted
- Increment – potentially releasable outcome of a Sprint
- Cross-functional – ability to deliver end-to-end without external help
- Self-management – principle that teams organize their own work
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