The Scrum Roles for Testers Part 2

The role of stakeholder consists of anyone who has a stake in the success of a project. This might include customers, employees, board members, or a variety of other groups. As part of the organisation creating a product, testers are also stakeholders.

Testers interact with other stakeholders in ensuring that a product goes to market with as few bugs as possible. A robust product improves customer satisfaction. Higher customer satisfaction results in a more successful organisation. Without testers, products would have more errors and crashes. These problems would reflect badly on the product and organisation, as well as stakeholders by extension. Since testers are responsible for finding and identifying bugs, they are vital in producing a good product that rewards stakeholders.

Vendors

The role of vendor is any individual or company that offers pieces and elements that are included in a product. While testers are not responsible for testing the code and functionality that vendors offer, they may encounter issues that originate outside of their own product. If testers determine that an error appears to be because of a vendor component and not specifically from code written by their team, they may need to submit a bug report to the vendor.

Scrum Guidance Body

An optional role, the Scrum Guidance Body manages more global and industrial requirements. Something like a legal change that is mandated by the government and may influence the Scrum project would be a responsibility of the Scrum Guidance Body. They must be aware of these industry changes, and lead the team in how to best comply with the regulations.

Since testers are often the last line of defence before a product goes to customers, they are responsible for verifying that the product does comply with guidelines set by the Scrum Guidance Body. If a product fails to uphold these regulations, there could be severe penalties for the organisation that created the product, as well as its customers. While testers are not alone in this responsibility, they could be the difference between sending a non-compliant product to market, and ensuring that the product receives last minute changes to satisfy the rules.

Testers are clearly an important part of any Scrum project. They interact with with other roles on the project in very specific ways, and the success of a product depends on testers being able to adequately perform their duties.

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