Roles
The Product Owner is the representative of the business to the team. He maintains the product backlog, the repository of the work needed to be done. He priorities this list according to business value and ranks the items in order of priority. The product owner makes the decisions about the product and ensures that it meets the business needs.
The development team is individuals that ensure that the vision presented by the product owner is made into a tangible product. These are the software developers, testers, and business analysts.
Unlike in waterfall where each role does not interact as often as possible in each software development phase, in Agile, it is critical that each of these roles coordinate often. These roles are now functioning as one team with the goal to deliver a potentially shippable product increment each sprint with high quality. It is the responsibility of the Scrum Master to ensure that this team will be able to self-organize – to deliver under minimum supervision – and be cross-functional – for each team member to grow, acquire and use skills as the team needs it to deliver their sprint goal. The Scrum Master is considered as the guardian of Agile and Scrum values, principles and practices. He acts as a teacher, coach and servant leader of the team. He ensures that the committed work is delivered within the sprint. He facilitates the scrum meetings and builds the culture of transparency and collaboration in the scrum team. The Scrum Master guides the team as they undergo Bruce Tuckman’s “forming, storming, norming, performing, norming and adjourning” stages.
Forming Scrum Teams using Tuckman’s Theory
Forming
This is where the team members are brought together and informed that they will be working as a team. During this stage, everyone is still in the “getting to know each other” phase. This is where they try to understand their objectives, roles, and responsibilities both as individuals and as a team.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course:
Course Contents
Section 1: Agile Project Management
Section 2: Using the Agile Manifesto to Deliver Change
Section 3: The 12 Agile Principles
Section 4: The Agile Fundamentals
Section 5: The Declaration of Interdependence
Section 6: Agile Development Frameworks
Section 7: Introduction to Scrum
Section 8: Scrum Projects
Section 9: Scrum Project Roles
Section 10: Meet the Scrum Team
Section 11: Building the Scrum Team
Section 12: Scrum in Projects, Programs & Portfolios
Section 13: How to Manage an Agile Project
Section 14: Leadership Styles
Section 15: The Agile Project Life-cycle
Section 16: Business Justification with Agile
Section 17: Calculating the Benefits With Agile
Section 18: Quality in Agile
Section 19: Acceptance Criteria and the Prioritised Product Backlog
Section 20: Quality Management in Scrum
Section 21: Change in Scrum
Section 22: Integrating Change in Scrum
Section 23: Managing Change in Scrum
Section 24: Risk in Scrum
Section 25: Risk Assessment Techniques
Section 26: Initiating an Agile Project
Section 27: Forming the Scrum Team
Section 28: Epics and Personas
Section 29: Creating the Prioritised Product Backlog
Section 30: Conduct Release Planning
Section 31: The Project Business Case
Section 32: Planning in Scrum
Section 33: Scrum Boards
Section 34: Sprint Planning
Section 35: User Stories
Section 36: User Stories and Tasks
Section 37: The Sprint Backlog
Section 38: Implementation of Scrum
Section 39: The Daily Scrum
Section 40: The Product Backlog
Section 41: Scrum Charts
Section 42: Review and Retrospective
Section 43: Scrum of Scrums
Section 44: Validating a Sprint
Section 45: Retrospective Sprint
Section 46: Releasing the Product
Section 47: Project Retrospective
Section 48: The Communication Plan
Section 49: Formal Business Sign-off
Section 50: Scaling Scrum
Section 51: Stakeholders
Section 52: Programs and Portfolios