Who is responsible for making sure the Scrum process is followed and for incrementally improving the process?

The roles in Scrum are quite different from the traditional software methods. Clearly defined roles and expectations help individuals perform their tasks efficiently. In Scrum, there are three roles: Product Owner, Development Team, and Scrum Master. Together these are known as the Scrum Team.

Scrum Master: Roles and Responsibilities

The Scrum Master helps the product group learn and apply Scrum to achieve business value. The Scrum Master does whatever is in their power to help the Team, Product Owner and organization be successful. The Scrum Master is not the manager of the Team members, nor are they a project manager, team lead, or team representative. Instead, the Scrum Master serves the Team; he or she helps to remove impediments, protects the Team from outside interference, and helps the Team to adopt Agile development practices. He or she educates, coaches and guides the Product Owner, Team and the rest of the organization in the skillful use of Scrum.

Scrum Master ensures everyone follows the practices prescribed by Scrum.

• A Scrum Master is a facilitator and Servant Leader who encourages and demands self-organization from the development team.
• A Scrum Master enables close cooperation across all roles and functions, addresses resource issue and disobedience of scrum practices.
• A Scrum Master protects the team from external and internal distractions.
• A Scrum Master removes impediments so the team can focus on the work at hand and follow scrum practices.
• A Scrum Master is not typically a manager or lead, but he is an influential leader and coach who does not do direct command and control.

Scrum Product Owner: Roles and Responsibilities

The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing return on investment (ROI) by identifying product features, translating these into a prioritized list, deciding which should be at the top of the list for the next Sprint, and continually re-prioritizing and refining the list. The Product Owner has profit and loss responsibility for the product, assuming it is a commercial product. Product Owner in Agile is like a spokesperson for customer and needs to represent them,

• A Product Owner owns the Product backlog and writes user stories and acceptance criteria.
• A Product Owner is responsible for prioritizing the Product Backlog is prioritized and decides the release date and the content.
• A Product Owner accepts or rejects product backlog item.
• A Product Owner has the power to cancel the Sprint, if he thinks the Sprint goal is redundant.
• A Product Owner is the one who is responsible for the Return on Investment (ROI) of the product.

Development team: Roles and Responsibilities

A Development Team is a collection of individuals working together to develop and deliver the requested and committed product increments. It comprises of cross-functional members who are capable of achieving the sprint goals. This could include software engineers, architects, programmers, analysts, system admins, QA experts, testers, UI designers, etc.

• The Development Team builds the product that the Product Owner indicates: the application or website, for example. The Team in Scrum is “cross-functional”
• The Development Team includes all the expertise necessary to deliver the potentially shippable product each Sprint
• The Development Team is self-organizing, with a very high degree of autonomy and accountability.
• The Development Team decides how many items to build in a Sprint, and how best to accomplish that goal.
• The Development Team is a cross functional, small and self-organizing team which owns the collective responsibility of developing, testing and releasing the Product increment.
• The Development Team may not appoint any team lead since decisions are taken collectively by the team.

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The Scrum Framework is simple, and it follows the 3-5-3 structure: 3 Roles, 5 events, 3 Artifacts. These elements are crucial to the success of doing Scrum and nothing is optional. Disregarding even a single aspect of this structure means you are not implementing Scrum. 

Although Scrum gives you freedom in how you implement it within your organization, there are basic rules that you should follow.

The 3 Roles

Product Owner

The main priority of the Product Owner is the Product Backlog. He/She is responsible for its upkeep and is in charge of prioritising the Product Backlog items according to their value. The Product Owner should have a vision for the product, and he/she should align with the Development Team and the other teams to ensure that it is attainable.

The Product Owner should always be in constant communication with the team. He/She should provide guidance while monitoring the progress of the work, making sure it is aligned to his/her vision and that the team is delivering the correct value. However, the Project Owner should not tell the Development Team how to do the work. Instead, he/she should trust that they have the right skills and knowledge to turn the vision into reality. 

Aside from coordinating with the Development Team, the Product Owner should also be responsible for communicating with stakeholders and customers. He/She should gather and assess information and requirements that can help the project. Moreover, the Product Owner could showcase accomplished work so everyone can see it early and often.

Scrum Master

The Scrum Master is in charge of ensuring that the team is following the proper Scrum structure. He/She acts as a coach or a mentor, even a defender, of the Development team. When there’s a bottleneck in the process, Scrum Masters will readily and aggressively remove the barrier to make sure that the team’s work goes smoothly.

A Scrum Master focuses on making the Scrum Teams the best they can be. He/She encourages them towards continuous improvement and delivering value. Although a Scrum Master always adheres to the Scrum framework, he/she always looks for creative and innovative approaches on how to work with the team.

Great Scrum Masters understand that the team’s success is their success.

Development Team

The main concern of the Development team is working on their Sprint Backlog and ensuring that they are done. They own the Sprint Backlog and no changes can be made into the log without the team’s approval. A strong development team should possess self-organising and self-managing individuals who can decide their own processes and the deliverables that they are working on within a Sprint.

They are focused on maximising the value that they are creating. The team can consult with the Product Owner to determine the right work that goes into a sprint to create a Sprint Goal. Development Teams are cross-functional and collaborative, and they do their best work together as a team to continuously produce high-quality, high-value products.

The 5 Events

The Sprint

The core of the whole Scrum framework is The Sprint. It is the time where the Scrum Team creates work and provides value to the business. The length of a Sprint can vary, it can go from a week to a month (ours are normally two weeks), and it offers clear borders for the team. It gives way to a constant feedback loop to ensure that value is provided to the customers continuously.

All the other events in Scrum relies on the Sprint itself. Without the Sprint, the Scrum will lack rhythm, and the flow of the work will be disrupted. It allows the team to have a rapid release of a high-quality product.

Sprint Planning

Sprint Planning includes the Development Team and the Product Owner. They work together to identify high-value work. During Sprint Planning, they decide what to focus on, and design a plan on how to get their job done efficiently. Sprint Planning is essential because it is a formal agreement on the deliverables and the processes.

Scrum

The Scrum is a 15-minute daily meeting of the team to discuss the progress so far, and how the next 24 hours is going to be spent. It serves as a status report from everyone on the Development Team. It is not necessary for the Scrum Master or the Product Owner to attend, although it is encouraged in case questions arise. However, the Development Team should discuss their work with each other and not focus on reporting to the Scrum Master or the Product Owner. 

Just like the Sprint, the Daily Scrum provides a rapid feedback loop. Because everyone in the team is updated on the progress of each member, it is easier to inspect and adapt in case there are changes needed to achieve the goal faster. When something needs to be corrected, the Daily Scrum is the best time to re-align and make sure that the targets are still met.

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Sprint Review

The Sprint Review showcases the work that has been done within the Sprint to the stakeholders. This is done so that their insights can be integrated into the product to make it better and more value-adding. Furthermore, the Sprint Review gets them excited about what has been accomplished, and they will be eager to put the output to use. A bulk of the work that needs to be done in a Sprint comes from the Sprint Review, and without it, the team will be blindly working on the project, not knowing what the stakeholders genuinely want.

Sprint Retrospective

Scrum Teams get together to talk about how a Spring went in a Sprint Retrospective. They will discuss ways to improve the next Sprint. The Sprint Retrospective comes in many forms, but the ultimate goal is to identify one or more action items that the team can implement on the next Sprint to improve how the team works together.

The 3 Artifacts

Product Backlog

The Product Backlog contains the vision of the Product Owner for the product. It is regularly maintained, and it should provide the right amount of work for the next several Sprints in scope. The backlog should always be kept up-to-date, now work should be listed down if it’s not going to be needed for months. Although it’s essential to plan for the future of the project, it is crucial to itemize prioritised tasks in the Product Backlog. When the Product Owner feels like it’s getting close to a point where the tasks are valuable during that time, it should be added to the backlog. 

The Product Backlog is a living artifact. It is updated continuously by the Product owner to ensure that the high-priority, high-value items are on top.

Sprint Backlog

You can consider the Sprint Backlog as the child of the Product Backlog. It consists of tasks that the Development Team thinks can be done in the current Sprint. The Sprint Backlog can be negotiated by the Development Team and the Product owner to make sure that the highest value items are accomplished. The Scrum Master then ensures that the Development Team does not take on more than they can handle. This plan should result in an updated Product Increment.

Product Increment

The end goal of every Sprint is a Product Increment. This is the concrete output of work done, fully inspected by the Product Owner and the stakeholders. It may also be ready to be released into production. However, not all Product Increments are Production Increments. Product Increments should provide the value promised by the Development Team.

What can your business do next?

If you’re looking into implementing the Scrum Structure for your business, April9 provides project management services to help you leverage Scrum’s benefits. We can facilitate a seamless transition by streamlining your whole enterprise. With the help of our project managers and Scrum Masters who specialise in best practices, you can achieve your high-quality, and high-value products for your market. 

Let’s talk today, and we’ll show you how we can help you achieve your business goals.