A major theme in Scrum is “inspect and adapt.” Since development inevitably involves learning,
innovation, and surprises, Scrum emphasizes taking a short step of development, inspecting both the
resulting product and the efficacy of current practices, and then adapting the product goals and
process practices. Repeat forever.
Scrum Roles
In Scrum, there are three roles: Product Owner, Team, and ScrumMaster. Together these are known
as the Scrum Team.
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. In the case of an internal
application, the Product Owner is not responsible for ROI in the sense of a commercial product (that
will generate revenue), but they are still responsible for maximizing ROI in the sense of choosing –
each Sprint – the highest-value items. In practice, ‘value’ is a fuzzy term and prioritization may be
influenced by the desire to satisfy key customers, alignment with strategic objectives, attacking risks,
improving, and other factors. In some cases, the Product Owner and the customer are the same
person; this is common for internal applications. In others, the customer might be millions of people
with a variety of needs, in which case the Product Owner role is similar to the Product Manager or
Product Marketing Manager position in many product organizations. However, the Product Owner is
somewhat different than a traditional Product Manager because they actively and regularly interact with
the Team, prioritize by working with all of the stakeholders and reviewing the results each Sprint,
rather than delegating development decisions to a project manager. It is important to note that in
Scrum there is one and only one person who serves as – and has the final authority of – Product
Owner, and he or she is responsible for the value of the work; though that person doesn’t have to
work alone.
The Team (also called Development Team) builds the product that the Product Owner indicates:
the application or website, for example. The Team in Scrum is “cross-functional” – it includes all the
expertise necessary to deliver the potentially shippable product each Sprint – and it is “self-
organizing” (self-managing), with a very high degree of autonomy and accountability. The Team
decides how many items (from the set offered by the Product Owner) to build in a Sprint, and how
best to accomplish that goal .
Each member of the Team is just a team member. Notice there are no fixed specialist titles in a group
that adopts Scrum; there is no business analyst, no DBA, no architect, no team lead, no interaction/
UX designer, no programmer. They work together during each Sprint in whatever way is appropriate
to achieve the goal they have set for themselves.
Since there are only team members, the Team is not only cross-functional but also demonstrates multi-
learning: each person certainly has special strengths, but also continues to learn other specialties. Each
person will have primary, secondary and even tertiary skills, and is meant to “go to where the work is”;
individuals take on tasks in less familiar areas to help complete an item. For example, a person whose
primary skill is interaction design could have a secondary skill in automated testing; someone with
primary skill in technical writing might also help with analysis and programming.
The Team in Scrum is seven plus or minus two people, and for a software product the Team might
include people with skills in analysis, development, testing, interface design, database design,
architecture, documentation, and so on. The Team develops the product and provides ideas to the
Product Owner about how to make the product great. In Scrum the Teams are most productive and
effective if all members are 100 percent dedicated to the work for one product during the Sprint; the
Team avoids multi-tasking across multiple products or projects, to avoid the costly drain of divided
attentions and context-switching. Stable teams are associated with higher productivity, so avoid
changing Team members. Product groups with many people are organized into multiple Teams, each
focused on different features for the product, with close coordination of their efforts. Since one team
often does all the work (planning, analysis, programming, and testing) for a complete customer-centric
feature, Teams are also known as feature teams.
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