Scrum Team

Are you looking to implement a Scrum Framework, but unsure about Scrum team roles and responsibilities?

Adopting the Scrum framework can be challenging, especially when it comes to understanding its roles and responsibilities. Unlike traditional project management methodologies that consist of hierarchies, the Scrum framework forms a self-organized scrum team that collectively drives the project forward. 

In scrum, roles are not defined by ranks or rigid structures but by their contribution to the team’s success. They are crucial for the successful delivery of the project. That’s why, if you want to implement the scrum framework, you need to start with its roles.

But how to do that?

Is it as easy as it sounds? 

Well, not really! But fret not. In this article, we will explore all three scrum team roles, their importance, and how to build a strong scrum team. 

So, let’s get started!

Three Key Scrum Roles

Scrum Framework consists of three key roles: Product owner, scrum master, and development team. They collaboratively form a scrum team and work together to plan, execute, and deliver the product increments.  

However, it is important to note that the scrum role differs from the traditional job title. Scrum roles define the key responsibilities and contributions that team members require to achieve the project goals. Besides, anyone can take on the scrum roles, depending on their skills and team needs. For example, a project manager might take on the scrum master role, but their focus will shift from controlling tasks to facilitating team members, eliminating blockers, and more. 

Let’s have a detailed look at each scrum role and responsibilities:

Scrum Master

Implementing the Scrum framework is not a one-time task. It requires continuous learning and improvement to ensure its successful adoption and execution. That’s where a Scrum Master comes into the picture. 

A scrum master is someone who acts as a guide, coach, and facilitator for the scrum team. Unlike a traditional project manager, a scrum master is not a command and control figure, instead, he works as a servant leader to drive the scrum team toward success. 

For instance, he works with the product owner to manage the backlog, prioritize work items, and communicate values. They help the development team stay focused, eliminate blockers, and deliver the increments within the sprint timeframe. 

Here are some things that scrum masters are responsible for:

Facilitate Scrum Ceremonies: The Scrum masters are responsible for organizing and leading the Scrum events such as daily scrum, sprint planning, review, and retrospectives. They ensure that these events remain time-boxed, focused, and goal-oriented. Additionally, they also encourage the team members to step out of their comfort zone and share ideas, concerns, and opinions to improve the team’s efficiency and overall work quality. 

Remove Impediments: Team members face various blockers throughout the sprint cycle and the scrum master is responsible for eliminating these issues and problems. These impediments range from unclear feature requirements to dependencies or lack of resources. Scrum masters collaborate with stakeholders, leadership, and other teams to find solutions and resolve these problems. 

Coaching: The Scrum framework contains a set of values, principles, and practices that guide the team toward project goals. Scrum master coaches the team on agile methodology and ensures that everyone adheres to these scrum values and principles. Through regular coaching, they help the team become efficient, innovative, and flexible. 

Promote Collaboration: Scrum masters actively work to promote collaboration and trust within the Scrum team. He ensures open, honest, and transparent communication so everyone’s voice is heard and valued. This creates a collaborative working environment for the scrum team to share knowledge, solve problems, and work together to achieve project goals. 

Product Owner

While the Scrum Master encourages the team to deliver value by facilitating processes and removing impediments, the Product Owner defines the “what,” “when,” “who,” and “why” of the work needs to be delivered. 

He decides what feature to build to meet customer needs and stakeholders’ requirements, when it should be delivered, who will work on it, and why it is valuable for project goals. Product owners work closely with the stakeholders and act as a bridge between the scrum team and stakeholders. 

In Scrum Framework, the product owner is responsible for:

Defining the Product Vision: The product must ensure that all stakeholders including the scrum team clearly understand the goals, objectives, and vision of the product. 

Manage Product Backlog: Based on product vision and stakeholders’ requirements, the product creates and manages the product backlog. He is responsible for creating user stories, writing acceptance criteria (Definition of Done), and prioritizing work items based on customer needs and product goals. He ensures the development team has all the information required to build a product or increment. 

Stakeholders & Customers Management: The product owner works as the voice of stakeholders and customers involved in the product. He collaborates with them regularly to understand their needs, requirements, and concerns to align the product increments with their goals.  

Release Management: In the scrum framework, team release increments after each sprint to ensure continuous delivery. The product owner plays a crucial role in ensuring that the right product is delivered at the right time. 

Development Team

Now that you have a Scrum Master to facilitate processes and a Product Owner to guide priorities, it’s time to focus on forming a Development Team. This is the group responsible for turning ideas and plans into tangible product increments. However, there is a significant difference between the traditional project management team and the scrum framework development team. 

In traditional project management, the development team consists of developers who work only on the tasks assigned by the project manager. In contrast, the scrum development team is self-organized and cross-functional. Instead of being directed, they collaboratively work together with the product owner and scrum master to determine how to achieve the product goals. 

Similarly, when a team encounters a problem, the development can make decisions to resolve the issues instead of waiting for directions. The development team’s responsibilities include:

• Delivering potentially shippable increments by the end of each sprint. 
• Monitoring the team’s progress via tools such as burn-up and burn-down charts and making decisions to improve the team’s velocity and efficiency. 
• Ensuring transparency during the sprint by reporting the progress and discussing impediments during the daily scrum and other sprint events such as sprint review, planning, and retrospectives. 
• Planning and estimating the work items during the sprint planning and helping the product owner to create the sprint goal. 
• Maintaining the product increment quality by ensuring that every increment meets the acceptance criteria and DOD. 

Getting Started with Scrum Team Roles

Now that you understand all three scrum roles and their responsibilities, it’s time to choose which scrum role aligns with your skills, interests, and career aspirations. Here is how you can decide which role to choose:

1. Are you a visionary and strategist? If you have strong communication and negotiation skills and are passionate about bridging the gap between stakeholders and developers then you should go for the product owner role. Here you require skills related to business analysis, strategic thinking, decision-making, risk handling, and stakeholder management to deliver value and achieve project goals. 

2. Do you love coaching and problem-solving? If you love coaching and mentoring and have a knack for helping team members resolve challenges then you should become a scrum master. This role requires facilitation, teaching, and collaboration with team members to enhance team efficiency and overall product value. 

3. Are you a builder and problem-solver? If you like doing hands-on work whether it is coding, testing, designing, or another tech discipline and you’re passionate about creating high-quality products, then you might consider becoming a development team member. As a developer, you will be involved in every step of product creation from planning to increment delivery. You’ll need to be self-organizing, adaptable, flexible, and highly responsible to fulfil your responsibilities.