By Knut Kvarme
By definition a team comprises a group of people linked in a common purpose.
It is my experience when I get involved in discussions regarding a new project, it soon becomes a conversation about the team and who you want to group together in order to deliver within the scope defined in the project assignment.
After several years with the cross-functional team mantra at mind, I no longer think about my new team in terms of who (people). I rather think of a range of skills that I need in my team. After staffing my team I usally find that not all the skills on my list have been covered. And that’s perfectly fine!
Getting the team started and having an inspect and adapt approach in regards to the team coalition is my preferred approach. Sometimes the team steps up and gains the required skills. In those cases no further staffing is necessary.
Other times my initial list of required skills might have been wrong, and we complete the team with adding people with other skills that I thought was needed. The big advantage of this inspect and adapt staffing approach is that the gained knowledge about the tasks in hand and the observation and understanding of the team, provides the answers on how to complete the staffing of the scrum team.
So, we have a complete team with the required skills. What now?
