The Scrum team: in theory just 3 roles

The Industry Standard Scrum framework relies on three roles, whose mutually exclusive responsibilities lead to positively-reinforcing behaviors that stabilize the process. Combining responsibilities eventually leads to contradictory drivers or conflicts of interest. The three distinct roles allow people to focus on defined responsibilities with different objectives driving behavior. These roles are not mapped onto the AFKL organisational context. This needs to be done on a per project basis. It is highly recommended to ask the help of an Agile expert, which you can find at the CCC Process Support & Methods. The Product Owner (PO) maximizes the Business Value of the product, by prioritizing requirements Business Value with high added-value for customers. The Scrum Master continually improves the development process, coaching the Scrum team to become more productive, improve quality and selforganize The Development Team manages the technical quality of the product by creating working software
In AFKL context, more roles might be necessary. Please contact CCC PS&M for advice and help in matching these roles in our organization.

Process Quality

The Product Owner A value-driven role

The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing Business value by managing value delivered with fixed iteration lengths by a stable team. He or she has mandate to make decisions about the product to be delivered and the money spent.

Responsibilities of the Product Owner are:

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Combining companys strategic goals with its customers needs to create a product vision Defining the roadmap Preparing the Product Backlog Estimating the business value of each Product Backlog item Creating user stories for items at the top of the backlog to deliver value as early as possible

In AFKL context, the person fulfilling this role, ideally comes from Business and could be supported by IMO.

Continuously reprioritizing the Product Backlog, adjusting long term expectations such as release plans predicting value earned per sprint and managing the product backlog to maximize delivered value Explaining user stories to the team during the Sprint planning and answering to questions during the sprint. Accepting or rejecting sprint results Involving and managing business stakeholders walk, talk, communicate, negotiate

The Scrum Master Leading without authority

The Scrum Master has no authority in the Scrum team. Influence is earned. He or she is a servant leader

Understand, facilitate and coach the team:

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Guardian of the process:

Facilitate the Scrum process Analyze progress to focus on incremental improvement over time Visualize the process and focus on removing single largest bottleneck Collect, analyse, broadcast project indicators and adjust forecasts Shield the team from distractions

Coach Development team to communicate effectively Act on obstacles and impediments for the team Create an environment beneficial to team self-organization Facilitator during ceremonies: timebox meetings, prioritize discussions, guide the team in effective retrospection

In AFKL context, this role is ideally fulfilled by someone who is familiar with development work and has organizational sensitivity.

Stand behind the team, not in front

Development Team Creating working software

Agile Development Teams measure progress through the diversity of working software1. Effective agile Development Teams share these characteristics:
Cross-functional all the skills required to build a complete production-ready product area represented in one team Small from studies of team behavior, the optimum size for effective collaboration is 5 9 people; not too large so that communication becomes an issue, not so small that overhead is excessive Self-organized no directive task setting, but team makes their own tasks Negotiates commitments with the Product Owner, one Sprint at a time Intensely collaborative Most successful with long-term, full-time membership. Scrum moves work to a flexible learning team and avoids moving people or splitting them between teams. Always seeks for ways to improve the process Uses an integrated development environment to create working, productionready software within a Sprint, allowing merging and check-ins with automated tests on a regular basis Strives for technical excellence

In AFKL context, this exists ideally of all people that contribute to the successful development of the product.
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Share a common Definition of Done for maintainability Use a Definition of Ready to prepare items in the backlog Encourage collective code ownership Build automated tests and integrate continuously Make quality of your code transparent to the whole Team

Agile Manifesto, Principle #7: Working software is the primary measure of progress

Pigs and Chickens

Pigs: Scrum Team Chickens: all other stakeholders1

Make sure to involve all stakeholders from the start. Stakeholders could be e.g. Ops, DS, User Groups and Architects. They are not full time available to the team, but should be there when needed. They have a stake in the Product Backlog and Definition of Done. Arrangements such as test and production environments, delivered by Ops, should be ready as soon as possible in the project. Therefore they should be involved from the very beginning.

Pigs in Scrum projects are the people that really commit to the sprint results, they are the ones that are going to make it happen: The Team. They are in to the fullest and responsible of reaching the committed result together. Chickens, or the stakeholders, in Scrum projects commit themselves only to delivering what is needed at the right time. They are only involved.