Scrum Roles

The Scrum has only 3 recognized roles: The Team, The Scrum Master, The Product Owner (PO). Of course there are other important roles like Manager, Team Lead, Test Lead etc. I’d call them as Leader/ Leadership Team.

The Team:

In Scrum world, all work items are delivered by the scrum team. They are the worker bees – performing all the duties to create the promised product and solution for the customer in smaller increments or sprints.

The responsibilities of the scrum team are:

• Breakdown the user stories to create deliverable chunk called tasks, estimate effort and distribute them among the team.
• Attend the 15 mins Daily stand-up Meeting.
• Ensure that at the end of the Sprint, fully tested (based on Definition of Done - DoD), fully integrated, demoable and potentially shippable functionality is delivered.
• Update the status and the remaining efforts for their tasks to allow creation of a Sprint Burn down Diagram.
• Demo the completed user story, attend Sprint Retrospective meeting and other sprint events.

Scrum is all about teamwork, empowerment, self discipline and taking full responsibility. All team members share the same norms and rules.  The team works in  as autonomous manner as possible. The skills within the Scrum team are balanced and varied: you should have all required skills to complete the commitments in optimal manner. There is no further hierarchy or sub-team within the team (No Java team, PHP team, Testing team). The team is normally co-located and an individual works full time within a Scrum team. Of course this last rule can be relaxed a bit – even though the result will be sub-optimal in doing so.  The ideal size of the Scrum team is 7 +/- 2.

Teams normally demonstrate very well the power of self-organization, if they are allowed to do so and left to themselves.

The Scrum Master:

The job of the Scrum Master to ensure that the Scrum Team adheres to the Scrum process, practices and rules. It’s an additional role of a Team member. She represents the team, remove obstacle and help team members reaching the Sprint goals.

The Scrum master is not a Team lead, Tech lead, Project Manager or a Solid Line Manager. Since it is crucial that there is trust between the Scrum Master and the other team members it would be ideal if the Scrum Team selects the Scrum Master itself and the management does not select her. 

The responsibilities of the Scrum Master are:

• Remove impediments for the Scrum Team (e.g. set up separate meeting, seek external help, escalate issues to the leadership team)
• Guard the Scrum Team from external requests and disruptions
• Ensure efficient communication between the Scrum Team and the Product Owner
• Coach the Scrum Team by asking right questions
• Organize and conduct various scrum events: Stand up meeting, Sprint demo & Retrospection, Sprint planning etc.

The role is very important! It helps you learn leadership by influence and respect without formal authority.

The Product Owner:

The Scrum Product Owner is a central role within the Scrum Framework.  PO represents the end customer and other stakeholders and is responsible for maximizing the effectiveness of the scrum team by driving the resources towards the most important set of tasks. The Product Owner has to work very closely with the Scrum Team and coordinates their activities over the whole lifetime of the project. No one else is allowed to tell the development team to work from a different set of priorities.

The responsibilities of the Product Owner are:

• Creating and managing the Epics / User stories / Product Backlog
• Coordinating with the Product manager or customer or other stakeholders (say a Chief Architect)  to assign relative priority to the product backlog
• Explaining and detailing the user stories to the team
• Attend stand up meeting and help steering the team to achieve the Sprint goals. Attend other Scrum events as well.
• Review and approve the completed user stories by checking them against agreed DoD
• Conduct Sprint planning meeting along with the Scrum master.

The product owner is the customer for the scrum team. So, better listen to her and keep her happy!

I’ll explain the role of the manager or the Leadership team in a separate post – because that will take a but of elaboration.

As always, let me know your views on the roles. Feel free to share this post with your teams.