Why we work as teams

In the Applying Professional Scrum class, which is like Scrum 101 for those who have never had formal training, one of our 'warm-up' questions in the class is to ask, "What is the value of working as a team?"

People often give answers along these lines:

• Greater experience

• The sum is greater than its parts

• Brainstorming

• It’s more fun

It’s a soft-ball question on its face. And yet.

I find that when people start to actually use Scrum, they often forget that they are supposed to be a team.

They assign each individual a task or Product Backlog Item, and then that individual goes off and works on it alone. Progress happens in parallel silos. Coordination is accidental. Collaboration is optional.

Which means they are losing the very value of being part of a team.

It brings to mind a sports team. A team doesn’t win because each player runs drills in isolation. They win because they understand each other’s strengths and work together to move the ball down the court.

For Scrum Teams, this can mean:

• Being okay with asking for advice from teammates

• Learning from each other, sometimes through pair or mob programming

• Relying on each other’s skills instead of “owning” specialties

• Helping each other remove impediments, even when they aren’t blocking you

• Swarming on the most important work instead of starting new things

• Sharing ownership of the Sprint Goal, not just “my” item

Sure, they might move a little slower at first. Sure, it can feel inefficient to stop and explain, or to jump in and help on something that “isn’t yours.” But over time, teams that actually behave like teams deliver more value, with higher quality, and with far less risk.

Scrum does not optimize for individual utilization. It optimizes for outcomes. And outcomes are created by teams, not heroes.

When teams truly embrace this, something subtle but powerful shifts. The Daily Scrum stops being a status report and becomes a planning conversation. The Sprint Backlog stops being a list of personal to-dos and becomes a shared plan. The Sprint Goal becomes something people feel responsible for together, not something they hope everyone else finishes.

That is the real value of working as a team. Not just that it’s more fun (though it often is), but that the work gets done better, the learning accelerates, and the results actually show up.