One team, no sub-teams
The Scrum Team is one team of people, typically ten or fewer, with no sub-teams and no hierarchies. It is cross-functional and self-managing: it has every skill needed to create value each Sprint, and it decides internally who does what, when and how.
Why it is like this
The 2020 Guide collapsed the old "Development Team inside the Scrum Team" precisely because that structure produced a team within a team, a handoff, and a Product Owner talking *at* developers rather than working with them.
Not to be confused with
Three roles that sit at different levels. The Product Owner and Scrum Master are in the team, not above it. And "self-managing" replaced "self-organizing" in 2020: the team decides who does what and when and how, which is a wider claim.
In practice
If a team is too large, the Guide's advice is to reorganise into multiple cohesive Scrum Teams — sharing the same Product Goal, Product Backlog and Product Owner — not to split one team into layers.
Source: The Scrum Guide, November 2020 (Schwaber & Sutherland) — The Scrum Team. Read on .
The Scrum Guide is published by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland under CC BY-SA 4.0. These cards are independent commentary written in our own words, not a derivative of the Guide's text. ytyk.org is not affiliated with, endorsed by or licensed by Scrum.org, Scrum Alliance or the Guide's authors.
Predict Check yourself
A 25-person group wants to use Scrum on one product. What does the Guide actually recommend?
Show the answer
Reorganise into several Scrum Teams sharing one Product Goal, one Product Backlog and one Product Owner.
Multiple teams, one backlog, one Product Owner. "Scrum of Scrums" appears nowhere in the Guide.