Scrum’s functions are somewhat different than traditional software approaches. There are three Agile roles: Product Owner, Production Team, and Scrum Master. Together they are known as the Scrum Team.
The Scrum Master
The Scrum Master allows the product community to understand and apply Scrum to gain business value. The Scrum Master does everything in their power to help the Team, and the Product Owner, and helps the company thrive. The Scrum Master is not the manager of the Team members, nor are they a project manager, team lead, or team representative. Instead, the Scrum Master serves the Team; he or she helps to remove impediments, protects the Team from outside interference, and helps the Team to adopt Agile development practices. He or she educates, coaches, and guides the Product Owner, Team, and the rest of the organization in the skillful use of Scrum.
The Scrum Master is a facilitator and servant leader who promotes and requests self-organization by the production team. The Scrum Master encourages close collaboration in all positions and functions, tackles resource problems, and disobedience to scrum practices. The Scrum Master protects the team from internal and external disturbances. The Scrum Master eliminates challenges so that the team can concentrate on the job at hand and follow the scrum practices. Scrum Master is not necessarily a manager or boss, but rather an important boss and coach who does not have clear command and control.
Product Owner
The Product Owner is responsible for optimizing the return on investment (ROI) by defining the features of the product, converting them into a prioritized list, determining which should be at the top of the list for the next Sprint, and constantly reprioritizing and improving the list. The Product Owner shall have benefit and loss of responsibility for the product, assuming that it is a commercial product. The Product Owner in Agile is like a customer’s representative and needs to be portrayed.
The Product Owner owns the Product Backlog and writes user stories and conditions for acceptance. The Product Owner shall be responsible for prioritizing the Product Backlog and shall decide the date of release and the content. The Product Owner accepts or refuses the backlog item of the product. The Product Owner has the right to cancel the Sprint if they feel that the Sprint target is redundant. The Product Owner is responsible for the return on investment (ROI) of the product.
Thus, the product owner is the primary stakeholder in the project. Usually, the owner of the product will be the main user of the product or at least have a deep understanding of who it will be. Despite this knowledge, the owner of the product is unable to assess how much work is going on in the sprint cycles or to adjust the objectives for that sprint. Product owners must be at the service of the team and regularly interact with it. Communication is a big part of this since the owner of the product interacts with both the team and other stakeholders.
The Development Team
The Development Team is a group of individuals working together to create the necessary and dedicated product increments. It consists of cross-functional participants who are capable of achieving the objectives of the sprint. This may include software developers, architects, programmers, analysts, system managers, QA experts, testers, UI designers, etc.
The Development Team develops the product suggested by the Product Owner: an application or a website, for example. The Scrum Team is “cross-functional”
The development Team shall provide all the skills required to produce the theoretically shippable product to each Sprint. The Development team is self-organizing, with a very high degree of autonomy and responsibility. The Development Team decides how many things to create in the Sprint and how best to achieve that goal. The development team is a cross-functional, small, and self-organizing team that has a common responsibility for designing, testing, and launching the Product Increment. The Development Team will not name a team leader as decisions are made by a team.
The Scrum Team Duties
Each of the Agile Scrum Roles has certain obligations that must be fulfilled:
- They need to break down the criteria, build a mission, estimate, and allocate them. In other words, this means that they need to build a Sprint Backlog.
- They’ve got to have a fast Daily Sprint Meeting.
- They must ensure that potentially transportable functionality is produced at the end of the Sprint.
- They need to update the status and the remaining efforts for their tasks to allow the development of a Sprint Burndown Diagram.
It is important for the Scrum Team to work well for everyone on the team by following a shared goal. They also need to comply with the same standards and guidelines and respect each other. Now you know about the three Agile Scrum Roles that are part of the Scrum Framework.
Proper training across popular Agile Certification Courses will help in Implementing Scrum and bringing in agility across departments.
Some of the popular Agile Certifications Courses that individuals and enterprise teams can take up are:
