The Scrum Roles: Describing the Individuals & Interactions

www.cspfastpass.com

1

EXERCISE

To begin this course on the Scrum Roles, we are asking you to complete a scavenger hunt. In order to complete this scavenger hunt, you will need to talk to some other people in your organization - a colleague and a manager.

Scrum Roles Scavenger Hunt

1. Take five minutes to ask your supervisor (or your direct manager or a senior leader in your organization) what are two questions they would like answered about the Scrum roles. Write those questions down.

2. Tell a colleague that you are taking this course and ask them for three questions they would like answered about the Scrum Roles. Write those questions down.

3. Successful Development Teams swarm on the work rather than dividing individual Product Backlog items to separate Development Team members. Find a picture of a group of animals working together as a team and upload it to the website.

4. The Product Owner is a bridge between the Stakeholders and the Development Team members. Find a picture of a famous bridge, upload it to the website and explain why the Product Owner is like the bridge in the picture.

5. Research the topics of “Servant-Leader” and “Servant Leadership” on the Internet. Write down the URL of the three best websites on these topics that are related to Scrum and Agile.

6. Research the authors “Ken Schwaber”, “Jeff Sutherland”, “Lyssa Adkins”, “Craig Larman”, “Mitch Lacey” and “Mike Cohn” on the Internet. Write down the title of ONE book they have authored about Scrum (or Agile) and identify the book you are MOST interested to read after the course.

Now take a moment to watch two short videos on the website about the different roles in Scrum. Use the space below to take any notes you might want to capture or to write any questions you might have for your instructor.

2

APPLY YOUR LEARNING

Instructions: review the list of statements below and identify the statements that are true and those that are false.

Scrum Roles - True or False? 1. The ScrumMaster is responsible for the delivery of the product.

(a) True (b) False

2. Development Team members provide estimates to Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog items.

(a) True (b) False

3. Only the Product Owner analyzes and decomposes Product Backlog items. (a) True (b) False

4. Development Team members are assigned to only one team at a time. (a) True (b) False

5. The ScrumMaster is a full-time role dedicated to assisting the Development Team, Product Owner and Stakeholders in receiving the maximum benefit from using Scrum.

(a) True (b) False

6. The Product Owner is responsible for the business outcomes. (a) True (b) False

7. The role of ScrumMaster and Product Owner can be combined. (a) True (b) False

3

8. The Development Team has the responsibility to deliver a high-quality product that can change over time.

(a) True (b) False

9. The Product Owner supports the ScrumMaster in helping the Development Team self-organize.

(a) True (b) False

10. Development Team members give the Product Owner status updates at the Daily Scrum.

(a) True (b) False

11. The Product Owner is allowed to make commitments on behalf of the Development Team.

(a) True (b) False

12. As a recognized authority of Scrum, the ScrumMaster assigns work to people in order to maximize business value for the Product Owner.

(a) True (b) False

13. Stakeholders are involved in the day-to-day activities of the Development Team. (a) True (b) False

14. Once the Product Backlog is defined, the Stakeholders do not have to pay attention to the outcomes of the Scrum Team.

(a) True (b) False

15. The technical lead is empowered to make architectural decisions for the Development Team.

(a) True (b) False

4

16. When a Development Team member has completed all their tasks for a Sprint, they have no more responsibilities to the Sprint.

(a) True (b) False

17. The ScrumMaster is the guardian of the Scrum process and works to ensure the organization improves over time.

(a) True (b) False

18. The term “Scrum Team” refers to the four roles of Development Team, Product Owner, ScrumMaster and Stakeholders.

(a) True (b) False

19. Once the Development Team members understand how to do Scrum well, the ScrumMaster has nothing more to do.

(a) True (b) False

5

CONCLUSION

Instructions: read the Technique “Pains-Gains Map” in the workbook and then review the three Pains-Gains maps for each of the roles in Scrum - Development Team, Product Owner and ScrumMaster.

To help you quickly identify the pains associated with each role, consider these questions:

• What does a bad day look like for them? • What are they afraid of? • What keeps them awake at night? • What obstacles stand in their way?

To help you quickly identify the gains associated with each role, consider these questions:

• What do they want and aspire to? • How do they measure success? • What would make their jobs (or lives) easier? • What can Scrum offer them?

6

Development Team Pains-Gains Map Instructions: based on the information in the videos AND your personal experience using Scrum, circle eight pains and eight gains for the Development Team.

7

Pains GainsStakeholders do not provide regular feedback on the product.

Deliver quality work that gets good reviews & positive feedback.

User stories are overly broad with unclear acceptance criteria.

An environment where everyone understands Scrum.

Dependencies on other teams (or systems) impact our ability to “get to done” before the end of the Sprint.

Seeing the product being used by the customers & receiving regular feedback from them.

Lack of collaboration between the developers & Product Owner.

No more late nights in the office or working on weekends; no more overtime!

Constant interruptions that derail focus & contribute to a feeling of being persistently off-track and\or behind.

Patience & trust from managers that we know how to deliver; enough time to figure out the best solution.

Scrum is being used in the wrong way and\or used to solve the wrong types of problems in the organization.

Being the best I can & deliver what I promise every time.

The work turns out to be more complex than what was initially estimated.

Support from the organization to remove impediments; it is “OK” to ask for help.

Lots of administrative tasks to be done (eg. meetings, JIRA, etc.) instead of writing coding & creating value.

Being a leader, not by bossing people around but by gaining the trust & support of the Scrum Team.

Lack access to modern technologies which prevent inhibit the timely delivery of the business goals.

The work to proceeds smoothly from inception to delivery leading to the successful completion of Sprint Goals.

Too many high priority items constantly getting added to the Product Backlog.

Protection from outside interference & unnecessary distractions.

Dealing with team members that are not committed to the team and\or the Sprint Goal.

Getting good business value at the end of each Sprint.

Lack the skills to be truly cross-functional. Good & open relationship with the customer.

Product Owner Pains-Gains Map Instructions: based on the information in the videos AND your personal experience using Scrum, circle eight pains and eight gains for the Product Owner.

8

Pains GainsA Sprint that fails to deliver any business value to the Stakeholders.

Having visibility into upcoming work in order to prepare for what is to come next.

Business leaders that do not provide clear direction & guidance to the product.

Delivery of high value features to our customers & exceeding their expectations.

Not being able to deliver an increment of the product by the end of each Sprint.

Having a working product at any time, even if incomplete, to gather feedback from customers & end users.

Stakeholders who provide insufficient resources (time, budget, people, etc.) to deliver the product.

Being recognized & respected within the organization as being an expert on Scrum & Agile.

Poorly defined Sprint Backlog with bad estimates.

Own the Product Backlog & make the final decision(s) about business value.

Lack the authority to make Product Backlog decisions which drive business value.

Facilitating a productive & collaborative environment that supports personal & professional growth.

Balancing Stakeholder expectations with what the Scrum Team can realistically deliver.

A cool product that satisfies the customers & delivers on key objectives for the business.

Working with a Development Team that does not deliver quality work.

Empowered to select the technical work that interests me without any outside influence.

Not enough business knowledge to provide good requirements & complete user stories.

Provide the right direction & product vision for the Scrum Team.

The Scrum Team works as a group of individuals rather than as a collaborative team.

More autonomy to make decisions that directly influence business outcomes.

Bad relationships among Scrum Team members leading to conflicts & poor morale.

Less critical bugs discovered in production.

Dealing with customers who do not care about\understand Scrum.

Quickly identify features which are unfeasible due to technical limitations.

ScrumMaster Pains-Gains Map Instructions: based on the information in the videos AND your personal experience using Scrum, circle eight pains and eight gains for the ScrumMaster.

9

Pains GainsSuccess as a ScrumMaster depends on others following through on their commitments.

Team learns to how to solve their problems by trying, failing & trying again until they succeed.

Maintaining the Product Backlog requires time & effort.

Advocates & supporters who champion the value of Scrum across the organization.

Failing to protect the integrity of Scrum due to the Scrum haters that try to bypass & undermine the process.

Complete authority on how to turn Product Backlog items into a potentially shippable product increment.

Stakeholders insist on an exact delivery date for all requests.

Framework to deliver business value that relies on transparency & collaboration.

No vision (or support) for change within the company.

Improved team spirit as the Scrum Team self-organizes around their work.

Look weak\ineffective when the late-breaking impediments derail a Sprint.

Stakeholders approve new functionality during the Sprint Review.

Have to attend too many long meetings instead of doing real work (eg. coding or testing).

Great communication between the Product O w n e r , t h e D e v e l o p m e n t Te a m & Stakeholders.

Taking on the duties of another Scrum role because the ScrumMaster is considered “part-time”.

Understand why the schedule has changed & can intelligently convey the reasons why to the Stakeholders.

Product Owner who is MIA (missing-in-action) & not engaged with Stakeholders.

An organization that understands & supports continuous improvement.

Environment that fails to give ScrumMasters time & space to do their jobs effectively.

A produc t i ve , sa f e & co l labora t i ve environment that puts people first.

Growing technical debt after each Sprint. Given enough time for cultural changes to take effect & yield benefits.

Outside impediments & distractions breaking the focus of the Scrum Team.

Easier integrations, quicker deployments & less bugs due to collaboration & teamwork.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

BOOKS

• The Art of Agile Development: Pragmatic Guide to Agile Software Development - by James Shore

• Scrum Mastery: From Good to Great Servant-Leadership - by Geoff Watts • The Great ScrumMaster: #ScrumMasterWay - by Zuzana Sochova • User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product - by Jeff

Patton (don’t let the title fool you, this is one of the best books on the role of the Product Owner)

• Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products that Customers Love - by Roman Pichler

• Product Mastery: From Good to Great Product Ownership - by Geoff Watts

BLOGS

• The Scrum Guide (the official source of Scrum in multiple languages) http://www.scrumguides.org/index.html

• Scrum Roles Demystified https://www.scrumalliance.org/agile-resources/scrum-roles-demystified

• Characteristics of a Great Scrum Team https://www.infoq.com/articles/great-scrum-team

• 42 Tasks for a Scrum Master’s Job http://agiletrail.com/2011/11/14/42-tasks-for-a-scrum-masters-job/

• Evolution of a ScrumMaster https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/evolution-scrum-master

• 37 Tasks for a Product Owner’s Job http://agiletrail.com/2011/11/29/37-tasks-for-a-product-owner’s-job/

• Every Product Owner Needs a Great ScrumMaster http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/every-great-product-owner-needs-great-scrummaster/

VIDEOS

• Scrum Roles and Responsibilities https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnqeFjlxOK0

• Agile Product Ownership in a Nutshell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=502ILHjX9EE

• Sh*t Bad Scrum Masters Say https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGbsgs611MM

10

TECHNIQUE

Pains-Gains Map

WHAT YOU CAN LEARN

Develop an understanding of the motivations and decisions for a specific person, role, persona or market segment.

WHAT YOU NEED

1) Post-it notes 2) Sharpies 3) Flip chart paper, whiteboard or a large wall

HOW TO DO THIS

Many decisions often boil down to one’s basic choices between benefit and harm. By capturing these specifics for a key person, you may uncover the most relevant points to bring up in presenting or influencing this person’s decisions. This key person may be user of the product (expressed as a persona), a crucial customer (or market segment) or even the leader of an organization whose approval is sought.  

Start by drawing a quick sketch of the person you are examining on sheet of chart paper. This is not an art contest, so stick figures and simple representations are just fine. If you are completely at a loss on how to draw the person, simply write their name on the top of the sheet of paper.

After that, draw a line down the center of the paper. Write “Pains” on the left side of the paper and “Gains” on the right side of the paper. Distribute the post-it notes and sharpies to the group. Make sure that everyone have a sharpie and post-its.

TIME NEEDED PARTICIPANTS OUTCOME

10 - 15 minutes 3 - 10 people Customer empathy & understanding

11

Begin creating your map by asking about the person’s pains. Encourage the group to step inside this person’s mind and to think and feel as this person by reflecting on the list of questions below.  

• What does a bad day look like for them? • What are they afraid of? • What keeps them awake at night? • What obstacles stand in their way?

Allow the participants about five minutes of silent writing (or working in pairs) to capture their responses on post-it notes, one answer per post-it. After the five minutes timebox is complete, put the post-it notes on the left side of the paper. Cluster similar post-it notes together and capture the duplicates.

Many times, a person’s gains can be the inverse of their pains. However, to discover the real innovation, or the breakthrough thinking that motivates a person to change their long-standing behavior(s), it is important to go beyond listing the gains as the mirror image of the pains. Use the questions below to think deeply on what motivates this person.

• What does this person want and aspire to? • How do they measure success? • What would make their jobs (or lives) easier? • What can we offer this person?

Again, allow the participants about five minutes of silent writing (or working in pairs) to capture their responses on post-it notes, one answer per post-it. After the five minutes timebox is complete, put the post-it notes on the right side of the paper. Cluster similar post-it notes together and capture the duplicates.

When finished, ask the group to summarize and prioritize the top pains and gains from the exercise. Use these pains and gains when developing presentations, value propositions or any other instance where you are trying to influence a decision.

Finally, please keep in mind that without further validation these pains and gains are highly speculative. It is important to quickly (and cheaply) find a way to test that the pains and gains you have identified are indeed pains and gains for your target profile.

WHO SHARED THIS WITH US

James Macanufo and Sunni Brown

12

CHALLENGE

For this challenge, we want you to think deeply about the various Scrum roles and how they might be applied in your organization. In a few moments, you are going to read an article about the various rights of the different roles (plus Stakeholders) in Scrum, some common product development tasks and then decide who does them in Scrum.

Just to be clear - this challenge is hard, but upon completion we feel it will clarify where the majority of the product development responsibilities reside in Scrum. Some of the job duties on this list are quite precise while others might be considered vague or open to interpretation. That is by design because every organization that uses Scrum interprets these job responsibilities a little bit differently.

Our recommendation is to do your best with what you think these tasks mean for YOUR organization rather than stress about what is the meaning of this term or that term. There might be jobs on this list that your company does not do. That’s OK - just make your best guess. If there are terms on this list that you are unfamiliar with either a) look it up on the Internet or b) just make a guess.

The purpose of this challenge is understand why job responsibilities are distributed to the different roles in Scrum not to score 100% on the activity (you will not get a perfect score on your first try). We recommend completing this activity on paper first (using the spreadsheet on the last two pages of this workbook) and then use the website to check your answers. As you work through the exercise on-line, carefully read the explanations if your selections differ from what is on-line. If you have any questions about, or disagreements with, the “correct” answer, please bring those comments to your instructor during your course.

13

Instructions: read the article on the the last page of this workbook about the various rights for the different roles (plus Stakeholders) in Scrum and underline any concepts that are new, or unfamiliar, to you. After you are done, complete the activity on the next page.

We hold these truths to be self-evident… Every Development Team member has the following rights:

To produce quality work at all times. To know what is needed from the business with clear declarations of priority. To ask for, and receive, help from peers, management, and customers. To experiment with new ideas, technologies and roles to grow both as a professional and an individual.

Every Product Owner has the following rights:

To receive the greatest possible value out of every week. To know what can be accomplished by the Scrum Team, when and at what cost. To see incremental progress in a viable product proven to work by passing acceptance criteria they specify. To be informed of schedule changes promptly in order to take effective countermeasures and reset expectations with the stakeholders. To collaborate with the business on setting the future direction of the product.

Every ScrumMaster has the following rights:

To try out different ideas, approaches and techniques to remove impediments which impede the flow of value. To be given time for initiatives to take hold and produce change. To take measured risks and learn from setbacks. To be supported by senior leaders in the organization. To be provided access to different parts of the business while identifying and removing impediments.

Every Stakeholder has the following rights:

To receive regular status updates through interacting with a working product. To change their mind, substitute functionality, and adjust priorities without paying exorbitant costs. To cancel the product at any time and be left with a working product providing real business value reflecting the investment to date.

14

Whose Job Is It? Instructions: based on what you know right about the Scrum roles, the various on-line activities and the reading you just completed (“We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident…”), mark with an “X” to indicate who is is responsible for completing these common product development jobs - Dev(lopment) Team? Product Owner? ScrumMaster? or some Other people?

As a reminder, here is summary of the key responsibilities of each role in Scrum. Use this summary to guide your choices in this exercise. Please note, it is possible that some job duties may have one, or more, owners.

Product Owner: maximize the business outcomes. Development Team: produce a high-quality product that can change over time. ScrumMaster: teach everyone about Scrum and improve the flow of value.

Job DutyDev

TeamProduct Owner

Scrum Master

Other

Selects the Development Team members

Creates and manages the schedule

Monitors progress and success

Coordinates work between the Development Team members

Manages the budget

Sets priorities

Commits to delivery dates

Assigns tasks

Communicates with stakeholders

Represents status

Interdependency management

15

Integrated schedule management

Contract management

Risk and issues management

Program strategy

Portfolio management

Manages stakeholders expectations

Estimates work items

Product Backlog owner

Sprint Backlog owner

Provides the Sprint Goal

Removes obstacles and impediments

Responsible for improvements

Responsible for implementing the Product Vision

Gets the work done

Provides feedback on progress

Manages scope

16