Symptoms of Maturity of a Scrum Team

In the Agile way of working and Scrum, we all talk about team's maturity. What are the characteristics of a maturing team? In this article, I am listing few of the characteristics of a maturing team.

1. Duration of Sprint Planning Meeting start reducing due to better and better refinement of PBIs
2. Refinement sessions start becoming shorter and shorter because DevTeam and Product Owner are refining Product Backlog on continuous basis
3. DevTeam starts ignoring presence or absence of Scrum Master during Daily Standup
4. Impromptu Retrospectives start happening
5. Fifteen minutes time box for Daily Standup starts feeling long
6. After Daily Standup, Scrum Master has shorter and shorter  To Do list w.r.t. impediment resolution  and DevTeam members are tackling impediments themselves
7. PBIs are of similar size
8. Burn Down chart is pretty smooth over many many Sprints
9. Product Backlog is DEEP enough and holding INVESTable PBIs for next one to two Sprints
10. In a truck hitting a DevTeam member thought  experiment, effect on velocity in short term start reducing
11. Technical debt has steady or downward trend
12. Scrum Master in getting more and more involved with organizational level impediments because DevTeam is tackling team level impediments
13. DevTeam is interacting with end users though work is routing via Product Owner

I am sure you have your own list. Let's share that list with the wider community.

Agile Journey

One day you are sitting in a waiting room. Sitting to your right is a lady who suddenly tells you. "Do you know, I have never made a mistake in my life."

The woman sitting to your left looks intrigued. "You've never made a mistake?"

Ms. Perfect: "Never. Every thing I ever did, every thing I ever said was the absolute perfect thing to do or say at the time."

Ms. Curious: "That's odd. I make mistakes all the time. Which is why I keep a list to remember what I'm going to do today, have a place to put my car keys, look both ways before crossing the street..."

Ms. Perfect: "You look both ways??? Me, I never look at all. Don't need to look. I already know if someone is coming. If I went across the street, no one was coming. If I stopped, it's because there were cars coming."

Ms. Curious: "You don't even look. I always look. In fact, I look twice, in case I missed something."

Ms. Perfect: "Me, I never look. Because after all, I'm perfect. In fact, I hardly look at the road at all. I just count on my perfection to get me there."

Ms. Curious shakes her head in wonder.

Suddenly you look outside and your car is being towed away. Apparently, you were in a tow zone. You rush out side, but it's too late. But you saw the number on the tow truck. You call and yes you can pick up your vehicle if you pay the fine. You need your car badly, but you'll have to pick it up.

You go back inside and relate your ordeal. Both Ms. Perfect and Ms. Curious are willing to give you a ride to the tow lot, and you are desperate. Whatever your concerns are for riding with a stranger, they are outweighed by your urgent need to get your car in time to pick up your children not much later in the day. And these 2 ladies are your only option for doing that.

So which car do you ride with, the one with the lady who claims she never makes a mistake and needs not to even look at what's going on around her, or the one with the lady who says she's cautious because she might make mistakes, so she always looks and double checks things?

So with whom you will travel on the Agile journey?