"Excellence Triangle" in a Scrum Team

Creating high-performing teams is not trivial. The creators of Scrum have done pretty well to understand what is essential and what is fluff and have come up with a set of great guidelines that are pivotal to success.

Scrum teams do get results. This is one big reason behind this framework's popularity. One of the biggest problems when working with the framework is the split between the three roles: Scrum Master, Product Owner and Development Team.

When discussing these roles, gaining awareness of the 3 excellence domains within a Scrum Team is extremely beneficial. I call it the "Team Excellence Triangle".

What does this triangle tell us:

1. Product Excellence

This area is focused on the product. In a Scrum team the Product Owner will be the one who guards this area. He will help and lead the team in delivering  the best product.

His mission is to provide guidance and clarify the customer perspective inside the team. He is also very aware of the priorities.

2. Technical Excellence

This area is focused on the architecture of a software product. Does it use the latest technology? Do we use the best development tools to leverage our knowledge? Does it have architectural standards? Does it have a good deployment streamline?

These are all technical area concerns which are usually addressed by the development team. The people who actually do the development will have the responsibility to constantly assess and come up with improvements and ways of implementing them.

3. Speed of Delivery

This is the area where the Scum Master or Agile Coach will be most concerned with. What is our current average delivery time? How can we become faster in giving value to our customers? How can we optimize the software development value stream?

Some common problems found in teams that are mixing these responsibilities are:

- not delivering sprint goals

- invisible work/technical debt

- working on different priorities than the ones set by the PO

- out of date technology

Start by clarifying the area of responsibility for the different roles in a team. The responsibility areas do not mean that the team does not collaborate. The contrary they help increase collaboration so that the team achieves balance between the three.