Who are: The Developers

What Makes Scrum Developers So Special?

The group of Developers on a Scrum Team is a small, cohesive team that is empowered and trusted to cooperate and collaborate to deliver the team’s product.  Developers are title-less, so they are focused more on the work the team does, rather than how they look individually in front of management.  Developers are cross-functional, so they are able to deliver a wide range of tasks needed by the product.  Developers are solely dedicated to their Scrum Team, so they can focus on theer team’s work, and don’t need to worry about other projects going on throughout the organization.

How Many Developers are allowed in a Scrum Team?

Well, there’s no perfect answer to this.  We know from experience that ‘small’ is better than ‘big’.  Small is somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 to 9.  The current Scrum Guide tells us to try and keep the entire Scrum Team to 10 or fewer people.  So, with the Scrum Master and Product Owner, we can assume that 8 or fewer Developers on a Scrum Team is ideal.

Yes, there are always exceptions to prove this wrong, but the overwhelming majority of cases show that small teams tend to deliver better working products than large teams.  Why?  Mostly because of the communication pathways that increase geometrically as more people are added to a team.  Since Scrum Teams pride themselves on being informed about everything on their team/product, it would be difficult for them to communicate effectively with, say, 15 developers.