Team composition

Why

Motivated professionals with the right expertise are needed to form a team with the Product Owner and build a great software product.

Prepare for success

Before the development team is composed, we need to have a global idea about the required expertise. This is explored during early conversations with the customer. If necessary, technical consultants are involved in these conversations in an early phase.

How

How do we compose the right development team? We try to find the balance between focus and efficiency here. Focus for our professionals means being on one team for one customer. Efficiency for our customers means having specialized expertise available when incidentally needed. During a project, the team members have an important responsibility here: arrange help when they need it.

Definition of Done[1]

  • A development team of at least 2 software developers
  • Coverage of all expertise that is mostly needed within the project
  • Backup arranged for more specialized expertise
  • Agreement within team on role of Scrum Master

Real Life Example

At the start of the development of a new mobile app that is expected to continue for years, it is decided to base the app development on the latest Maji Mobile stack. Because it is one of the first projects built on that stack, two important decisions are made in the team composition (total of five developers):

  1. One of the main developers of Maji Mobile becomes part of the team. This guarantees the optimal use of Maji Mobile, and allows for great knowledge transfer within the team.
  2. One of the developers from the Managed Services department will be part of the project team for the first few months. This ensures that Managed Services can seamlessly provide proper support from the first release onwards.

Notes

  1. Definition of Done - A shared understanding of expectations that the Increment must live up to in order to be releasable into production. Managed by the Development Team.