Ролі у SCRUM: Епізод ІІ. Повернення Scrum Master’а

Author: Andriy Kulshan, Business Analyst, Product Owner, Consultant, GlobalLogic Ukraine

In touch again Oleksandra Skibina and Andriy Kulshan and we continue to analyze the roles that exist in a SCRUM team!
In this column we will understand who the stakeholders, dev teams and scrum masters are. And for the most curious readers – we will find out what the key function of a manager is.
Let’s go!
If you missed the first Episode, where we considered the role of the Product Owner and business analyst, then it is right at the link .

Stakeholders

The term “stakeholders” is often encountered in professional circles. You might think that it is one or more people who always have the final say. This is often the case, but at the same time, this term includes almost all participants in the development process. Among them are:

• Clients. The direct customers we work with. These are decision makers, delivery and product managers from the customer company. There may also be people from marketing or sales departments who can help us understand what needs to be done, find out user expectations, and provide market analytics.

• Users. Internal and external. Depending on what product you are creating, there may be not only end users, but a large group of specialists who have ideas for improving the product.

• Team. The development team that sees and improves the product every day. Many people make a big mistake by not listening to the team, when their opinion can be very valuable.

• Everyone else. For example, external regulators. If you are in the medical or financial sector, your products must comply with regulations, rules, laws, which are often monitored by specialized organizations. You can also add internal regulators to this group – for example, the legal department. They do not directly affect the functionality, but they may impose some restrictions.

How to understand who  to work with and how ?

You can start with the ” Influence / Interest “ matrix . It will help determine where to classify a particular stakeholder group and how to organize the process of interaction with them .

• Manage Closely – The upper right quadrant contains stakeholders who have a high level of influence and are most interested in the product. This group of stakeholders should be worked with first.
• Keep Satisfied – the upper left quadrant includes those who are not particularly interested in the product, but have a lot of influence. These can be the same external regulators, or heads of legal departments. You need to make sure that they are not upset by adding the necessary functionality to the product.
• Keep Informed – stakeholders who are very interested in the product – they usually have a lot of ideas, but at the same time they have little influence on the project. We don’t want to offend them, so we inform them.
• Monitor – there are people who are not interested and have no influence on the project. However, you need to keep an eye on them sometimes, suddenly they will move to one of the other groups, or express ideas that will turn out to be useful.

Now let’s look at the Dev team in more detail.

DEV team

A Dev team is a self-organizing system. A team of three to seven people who have the ability to make decisions on their own. No one can tell the development team how many tasks they should do during an iteration. The Scrum Master and Product Owner can give their recommendations, but it is the Dev team that should make the final decision on how much work they will do.

The team should be cross-functional. This means that the team should have all the resources needed to perform the necessary work in the sprint. If an external specialist is needed, such as a UX designer or DevOps, then the Product Owner’s task is to take care of attracting him in advance. Everything needs to be planned in such a way that at the start of the sprint the number of external dependencies is minimized.

Another important point – Scrum does not recognize any titles within the team. The opinion of each team member is important and each person can influence when evaluating stories. And yet! We do not create sub-teams within teams – the entire scrum team is a single unit.

Scrum Master

Let’s take a closer look at the role of the scrum master. We can distinguish 5 main tasks.

1. The main task is to serve the team. If there is any obstacle in the team’s path, it is the Scrum Master’s task to remove it.
2. Facilitation. He facilitates most meetings: sprint planning, stand-ups, retrospectives, demo meetings.
3. The Scrum Master should be involved in training his team. That is, teaching team members how to interact with each other and with business representatives, optimizing processes, increasing their efficiency, and explaining what goals the team has for the current sprint and what expectations there are from customers.
4. The Scrum Master must interact not only with his team, but also with stakeholders. His responsibilities include teaching stakeholders how to better interact with the team. What processes are adopted for the project and how to collaborate with the team.
5. A Scrum Master is constantly improving his knowledge of Agile and facilitation. He uses every opportunity to improve the current process.

Now let’s move on to the configuration in which a Scrum master can exist. There are two main ones. The Scrum master on a project can be either a member of the development team or a dedicated specialist . Both configurations can have both positive and negative aspects.

The role of the manager

Does Scrum have a manager role? Let’s find out.

In SCRUM projects, we move from the traditional view of the manager as a project leader towards a servant-leader position . Thus, the manager’s task is to provide all the necessary conditions for creating high-quality products and to shape the project culture. He should help the team and the Scrum Master remove obstacles and improve processes.

The manager participates in team building, is responsible for people’s professional growth and keeps a close eye on things. On the other hand, he must interact closely with clients – his task is to build long-term and good relationships with clients.

The manager must understand what is happening in the teams, hold regular meetings with Scrum masters and Product Owners, and understand development issues. Quite often, the manager plays one of the Scrum roles.

A manager can play the role of Product Owner on a project, but in our opinion, it is better for a manager to be a Scrum Master. Now we will argue why.

Manager as PO. There is a great temptation that at some point he will start pressuring the team to increase productivity. Add tasks, increase their volume, etc. The manager will begin to be perceived exclusively as a person who is the source of tasks in the tracker. As a result, the team may not trust such a manager, people will stop sharing their problems.

In our opinion, it is better to choose the role of Scrum Master . What will this give:

• Knowledge of the domain and development process.
• Understanding the team’s area of ​​responsibility.
• Getting to know the team, understanding the status of each person – what their role is.
• Ability to quickly overcome obstacles.

But there is a nuance – such a manager will be more focused on development, not on people. But on the other hand, isn’t that what we are here for?

To sum up, in this column we covered:

• who are stakeholders and how best to interact with them
• Who is a Scrum Master and what are his responsibilities?
• analyzed the function of a manager in an Agile project and argued what role he should play.

This concludes our overview of roles in a SCRUM team. We hope this column will help you understand the roles and functions in a team and choose the path of cooperation that is closest to you and will lead the team to success!

May SCRUM be with you!