Symptom: Tasks during a sprint are skill set based such as "development" tasks or "testing" tasks for example. Often with large estimates that hide what work is to be done by the task even if placed on a scrum board.
Probable Cause: The team may still be thinking in silos in terms of who can do the tasks and with what skill set; a developer can only do "development" tasks or a tester can only do "testing" tasks for example. Rather than taking a more pragmatic approach and getting the work done by who ever is available in the team regardless of skill set.
Suggested Resolution: Try to use vertical swim lanes on the scrum board to represent "in analysis", "in development", "in testing", "in UAT" and "done" etc.
Fashion the taks to be feature or work based and they can then be placed in the corresponding swim lane to indicate what is happening with that piece of work at that time. A task to add a button on a web page that is currently in development can be placed in the "in development" swim lane for example. When it is being tested it could be moved to the "in testing" swim lane and so on.
Using tasks to represent features rather than skill sets to "flow" through the swim lanes in this way, will help the team to identify them as pieces of work to be completed by the sprint, and that the silo divisions between who is a developer, and who is a tester for example begin to blur and become irrelevant. (There may still be some specialist consultancy going on if some one knows more about testing a feature for example, but they do not necessarily have to do the work if they are busy on something else.)
What you are looking for here is a team that recognised that it is the visibility and completion of the work that is important and not who does it.
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