Scrum is a team sport. The team is accountable for delivering the product and value to the business within short iterations called sprints. Basketball teams are accountable for scoring more points than their opponents during games and over the season. Basketball and scrum teams are cross functional, empowered and must work together as a team to be successful. I want to further describe some concepts about successful teams using basketball as an analogy.
The college basketball tournament is held during March of each year. A committee selects the top 64 (plus a few extras) teams and creates a playoff bracket. The tournament is single elimination so if a team wins, then it advances to the next game. 
If the team loses, the team is out and goes home to get ready for next season. The team must win 6 games in a row to become champions. There are often close games and upsets so this tournament has become called “March Madness” where each team must “survive to advance”. Seems like a good time of year to discuss my analogy of basketball and scrum, so here goes …
Rules are simple but execution is hard. I can quickly describe the rules for both basketball and scrum. However, if I hand you a basketball and the rule book, it is unlikely that you would immediately be a good basketball player. It requires practice, coaching, and developing strategies that are not explicit parts of the rules such as setting “screens”, boxing out, “give and go”, etc. So why do we think we can train organizations on the scrum process with a single 1-2 day class and expect the teams to immediately be high performing? Scrum also requires practice, coaching, and having strategies to create high performing teams.
Teams win or lose, not individuals. The concept of team performance is critical in basketball and scrum. I try to stress that the goal is for the team to be successful. The easiest way to describe team effort is to relate to sports teams. In sports, the team wins or loses, not the individual players. In basketball the team with the most points at end of game wins. The team must work together to play their best to meet this goal. So what about individual top performers? Basketball teams have top 
performers like Michael Jordan, Lebron James, or Stephen Curry. They typically are paid more and get extra recognition. But they are only successful if the team wins. In general these players must become leaders to help make the other teammates better. The same is true about Scrum team members. An individual can be a high performer and complete a large number of tasks but if the team continually fails to meet the sprint goals, then the team is not succeeding. As part of a retrospective, the team should talk about how to improve collaborating and working together to make the team ultimately more productive.
Time outs are the daily scrum. Basketball teams take short time outs to discuss how the game is going and what changes can be made to be better. If we are scoring few points, maybe it is time to change our offense and strategy. If the opposing team has a person scoring a lot of points, maybe we should work together and “double team” that person. If the team is getting behind, the discussion needs to be about how the team can work together to achieve the game/sprint goals. In a daily scrum, imagine a developer proudly stating that “I completed my tasks” or in a time out, a basketball player stating that “I am scoring a lot of points”. These statements do not reflect an understanding of the team concept.
Game is two halves that are time boxed with a retrospective in between. Basketball usually is broken into two halves which are time boxed. Each half could be considered a sprint with the time outs as the daily scrum. The half time is in effect a retrospective where discussions are held about what things are going well and which things need to be changed for the upcoming half. The focus is on how the team can better work together to win the game. In basketball, the value is the game score. In scrum, it is meeting the sprint goals. When the game clock runs down to zero the game is over (ignoring overtime for an occasional tie). Likewise, the sprint is over at the designated time with no overtime to complete unfinished work.
Unfinished work is the shot that almost went in. Many times a basketball shot will tap the rim and spin around, and then slowly fall outside the rim. Imagine assigning points to these 
“almost in” shots. Likewise, let’s assume a team has been working hard on an user story which is “almost” complete. The team may ask to receive story points to pad the velocity for the sprint but in reality, delivered value is only measured by completed and accepted work. Points are credited in the sprint where the user story is accepted. The retrospective is the place for the team to talk about why the work did not get completed and practice to improve the chances of the shot going in next time — that is getting better at completing the user stories.
Teams are empowered and cross functional. Team members have special skills and a team often requires all of these skills to get the work done. Some basketball players are tall and are better at rebounding. The team (and coach) would not appreciate a player stating “I don’t have to play defense because I just need to rebound”. Basketball players during a game must help with all roles such as playing defense, scoring, rebounding, and dribbling if needed. Scrum team members often have skills such as designing, developing code, writing test cases, and documenting. Likewise, it would not be a team attitude to say “I do not have to test because I am a developer”. Teams are empowered to figure out how to work together to be successful and that may mean helping others on the team with other tasks when needed.
Teams must improve to win. Teams are ultimately accountable for winning games and meeting the sprint goals. What happens if a team continues to lose? In both cases, a team should take responsibility to figure out together what adjustments would lead to improvements. It may involve additional training, coaches, better collaboration, more practice, or additional resources. Management should empower and support the team to discover and implement ways to improve. If the team is still unable to improve over time, the organization and management may need to intervene as a last resort to recruit new personnel to get the team back on the winning track.
Would your scrum teams make the tournament? Would they survive and advance? If not, visit www.agile2success.com to learn tips for creating and growing successful Agile projects and teams.
