Learn Software Development

Different roles in a Scrum process - ScrumMaster, Product Owner, and The Team

ashish — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:00:40 +0000

A Scrum process has some key roles, which will not be familiar to those who have not done any Scrum training, or those who have not undergone Scrum. In order to make the Scrum process a success, it is critically important that wherever a Scrum process is being implemented, all the stakeholders understand the different roles involved and the responsibilities of each role. These roles are:
At a very broad level, first we should define two major categories. These are called ‘pigs’ and ‘chickens’. The difference is stated in the form of a standard joke,
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A chicken and a pig are together when the chicken says, “Let’s start a restaurant”. The pig thinks it over and says, “what would we call this restaurant?”. The chicken says, “Ham n’ Eggs”. The pig says, “No thanks, I’d be committed, but you’d only be involved.”
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In case you did not get the joke, for Ham and Eggs, Ham means that the pig has to dedicate portions of the body, while for Eggs, the chicken has just to deliver eggs, and remains whole. Hence the statement about Chickens being outsiders, while pigs are the people whose jobs are dedicated to this effort. In that sense, pigs refer to the team members who work day in and out on the project, while chicken refers to the other stakeholders who are involved such as management, customers, or who can also be defined as the people who are not assigned work, but are otherwise involved.

Now, once we move past this categorisation, we should concentrate on the people involved in the pigs role, those who are directly assigned work as part of the Scrum process. These are divided into 3 separate roles (and greater definition of these will be done in subsequent posts, just as the role of a ScrumMaster was defined in a previous article):
1. ScrumMaster: The ScrumMaster is the facilitator, running the Scrum meetings, working with the Product Owner, and ensuring that the processes are followed
2. Product Owner: The product represents Product Management, and defines the features and tasks that need to be done in every Sprint.
3. The team: The team is the group (small teams of between 7-10 people) who are assigned work for doing the project, and who are primarily from the development and testing teams.

What are the responsibilites of a ScrumMaster ?

ashish — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:15:27 +0000

One of the key roles inside a Scrum based project development methodology is that of a ScrumMaster. A ScrumMaster is a person who runs the meetings (daily Scrum meetings), but is not expected to be behaving like a leader, or to act as someone to whom people report their status. He does not define the features / user stories that are detailed in the Sprint planning, but instead works as a facilitator, ensuring that the process is being followed.
Here are some of the tasks / responsibilities for the ScrumMaster.
1. Must setup the Daily Scrum meeting, at a a regular place and time so that people be there at the required time without having to hunt for the meeting
2. Run the Scrum daily meetings, as well as the Sprint Review and Sprint Planning meetings
3. Ensure that the processes are followed, that people are attending the daily meetings, and are on time
4. The ScrumMaster must shield the time from external pressure, such as more senior management who would want to influence certain decisions, but doing so would break the Scrum process
5. The ScrumMaster is the one who updates the Burndown chart on a regular basis, as well as have full knowledges on what tasks have been completed, or pending, or where estimates have been changed. He needs to do this in a way without seeming to be acting as a manager
6. The ScrumMaster gets to know on a daily basis as to what could be the challenges or barriers that could be impeding the completion of a task from the concerned team member, and it is the responsibility of the ScrumMaster to ensure that these barriers are identified and their removal is prioritized
7. Similarly if there are technical issues found, the ScrumMaster would get together the relevant people outside of the Daily Scrum meeting to discuss and resolve
8. The ScrumMaster needs to ensure that the team members are able to speak during the Daily Scrum meeting, that they are restricting what they say to talk about done and new tasks, as well as any barriers
9. The ScrumMaster must be able to determine if there are any inter-team issues that could affect the productivity of the team or of team members, and quickly step in to help them get resolved
10. The ScrumMaster must have a great understanding of his / her own role, and understand the role of the Product Owner, such that there is no overlap between the roles and no tension as a result
11. The ScrumMaster must be the one who ensures that the team’s current status is passed onto all the stakeholders, and one way of doing that is through data such as Burndown charts and Backlog information
12. The ScrumMaster must ensure that people in the team are fully well versed with the Scrum process, including providing guidance or training; also the ScrumMaster must ensure that people in the team also have had the required technical training
13. Who is the ScrumMaster ? The ScrumMaster can be the Project Manager or the Program Manager, but can be anybody else on the team as well, from whom it is felt that the above points can be expected
14. The ScrumMaster must ensure that if somebody in the team or one of the stakeholders is breaking the rules, then it is pointed out and corrected

Learning about Scrum from free videos available on YouTube

ashish — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:53:17 +0000

Scrum is a project development methodology that is vastly different from previo us such development methodologies. It requires teams to change the way they do their processes, it requires management to understand what the process is all about, why it is different and how they have to let teams empower themselves and let them run with the process. Further, the concept of a self-energized team that runs the show and reports progress on a periodic interval (separate from the daily Scrum discussion) can be very different from the detailed status reports of Waterfall or modified Waterfall (it is technically not right to compare Waterfall and Scrum, but enough people do this, and it is accepted as a comparison).
For Scrum, it is essential that all the stakeholders (called pigs and chickens - where the pigs are the ones with a direct involvement in the day to day work, while chickens are other stakeholders such as management and customers) get some level of training. However, another important way to make more people aware that this is a great process that can work wonders for some types or projects is to see what other teams are doing, as well as to review some of the videos available on Youtube on scrum (it is free training in some self).

SCRUM in Under 10 Minutes (HD) by @hamids

Scrum Basics

Agile vs. Waterfall: A Tale of Two Teams

Scrum Masters 2 (funny)

Scrum optimized - what should you not do in your daily Scrum meetings

ashish — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:34:16 +0000

When you and the Scrum team commit to a daily Scrum meeting, there are some steps you need to take in order to ensure that people feel that these meetings add value to them and that they are valued members of this meeting; else they will not feel involved enough about sharing the required information. So, what are the steps that should be avoided once you are involved with the daily Scrum session ? You need to take care that you are avoiding the following signs in order to ensure that your Scrum sessions are effective. Now, some of these are tips that you would have seen if you had read about what are some of the steps that you should take in order to have an effective daily Scrum.
- Do not get into detailed discussion of issues in the Daily Scrum. If you have issues that need discussion, arrange for a shorter more involved team to have a separate meeting in order to discuss these issues; do not involve the full team in this discussion, and maintain the sanctity of the Daily Scrum as a place to discuss current updates
- When a boss like atmosphere prevails in the meetings, where people are supposed to report their status, and justify why things are happening or not happening on time, then the meeting is no longer meeting the goals of a daily Scrum meeting. In the meeting, people are supposed to be giving their brief updates to each other, not to a boss kind of situation.
- If people from senior management attend the meeting, then they should be encouraged to listen, and be as unobtrusive as possible, and avoid talking. This ensures that people are more open, and can speak without thinking that they are on a daily stand where they have to justify themselves.
- If the time and location for the meeting is not fixed, then people have difficulty in finding the meeting, and can spend time just hunting for the meeting
- This is a meeting for the team members, and the ScrumMaster is there to facilitate; however, if the ScrumMaster starts assigning tasks, then it starts breaking the rules of the meeting
- If during the meeting, it is noticed that the ScrumMaster has to keep on asking people for answers, then it is clear that either people have not really understood or they have not bought into the concept
- If you find people either being late to the meeting or not attending the meeting without good reason, it means that they do not see value in the meeting. This may be symptomatic of the wider team not being bought into the concept, and needs effort to understand what may be going wrong.
- If a meeting starts degenerating into a place where people catch up with each other, then that needs to be curtailed. This is a short focused meeting, and should remain as such.

Scrum explained: How to make the Daily Scrum a success

ashish — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:40:56 +0000

When following a process, it is very easy to tweak the process to make it more suitable for use, and this could result in a slightly enhanced rate of success. It is equally easy to make mistakes in the implementation of the process, something that will lead to reduced rates of success, or even in the failure to make the process effective. So many times in Scrum implementation, people find the Daily Scrum meeting a boring task, or cannot why they would need to meet everyday. When such feelings start setting in, it is very easy for these meetings to become ineffective. What can you do to make sure that you team makes these daily meetings very effective, thus leading to a higher rate of success for the Scrum.
Here are some tips and tricks that will help to make the daily Scrum meeting a success:
- The meeting is meant to be for a quick summary of current work done, and work done for the next day, as well as something that would impede success in doing this work. It is not meant to replace an issues meeting or be a problem solving meeting. Things that could impede a person are more like infrastructure issues such as lack of software, no place to sit, outside people not responding, etc.
- Issues identified that impede a person should be responded to quickly (as long as they seem genuine), by either the ScrumMaster, or by somebody else identified for this purpose
- From the above point, the meeting is supposed to be a short meeting, not more than 15-20 minutes.
- People realize after a couple of days that this is a good way for them to get a quick status update, and also serves as a channel for them to do the same
- Insist of people attending, and being on time. Reinforce this with penalties (agreed upon by the team at the start) so that people have a disincentive to be late or to skip. This also ensures that group pressure ensures that people will attend.
- People outside the Scrum team can attend the meeting, but they are there to listen, not to speak. Scrum meetings are meant for the team to state their positions.
- The Scrum team cannot be too large, not more than 8-10 people per team
- The area identified for each Scrum team is self-contained, and does not really depend on other teams
- One way some teams have made sure that the meetings are quick, and to the point is by making this a standing-only meeting. It ensures that
- The ScrumMaster steps in when the meeting seems to go off track - this ensures that people know that the meeting remains short and disciplined
- In the Scrum meeting, people talk to each other, and not give a Status Report to the ScrumMaster, there is no reporting relationship in the Scrum meeting
- If there is sustained feedback that the Scrum meetings are being seen as a waste of time, or not useful, then it is time to do an introspection as to what could be causing this pushback