Agile Methodology maintains distinct roles and responsibilities of the Scrum team thereby enabling absolute collaboration, swift conflict resolution and increases the team’s accountability and ownership. Scrum roles for successful implementation of Agile Scrum Methodology for product development and project delivery.

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The Scrum Body of Knowledge Guide (SBOK Guide) has very well defined Scrum roles for successful
implementation of Agile Scrum Methodology for product development and project delivery.
In the previous chapter, we provided an overview of how agile methodology came to life and how it
gained popularity over the years and was widely accepted across industries.
Continuing our efforts to help you gain more insights into the agile methodology, we would like to help
you understand the basics of the Scrum Team and Scrum Roles.
Take a look at the below image to understand how the Scrum Roles are constituted and look in an actual
Scrum implementation.
Ref: - SBOK Guide 3rd
Edition

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The Major Scrum Roles:
 The Product Owner
 The Scrum Master
 The Development Team
 The Scrum Team or the Scrum Core Team

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The Product Owner
Product Owner (PO) is undoubtedly the “voice of the customer”. He owns the product end to end and is
responsible for the overall product delivery.
As explained by the Scrum Guide –
“Product owner is a scrum development role for a person who represents the business or user community
and is responsible for working with the user group to determine what features will be in the product
release.”
Having said that it is important to understand the characteristics or expertise of the Product Owner.
He has the most challenging role of wearing multiple hats throughout the product development journey.
 Communicator
 Subject Matter Expert
 End User Advocate
 Business Advocate
 Decision Maker

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A Product Owner plays a crucial role in disseminating the vision and intent of the product, its detailed
features, design and the single person to maximize the return on investment of product.
His leadership skills are tested to the core as he is one tasked with conflicting goals, opinions and make
decisive final call.
For all practical purposes he is the Backlog Owner. The end to end responsibility of managing,
prioritizing and deciding what goes in and out of the backlog lies on the Product Manager.
Some of the key activities in Backlog Management include:
 Expressing the Product Backlog Items in detail.
 Ensuring that the Product Backlog is transparent and understood by everyone who would be
impacted by the product.
 Ordering the Product Backlog in such a way that it optimizes the value of work done by the
development team
 Making sure that the Product Backlog raises transparency to the extent that it is clear what the
Scrum team is going to work on next.
 Raising the transparency of Product Backlog to a level where stakeholders can see how value is
being added to the Product.
 Helping Development Team with Product Backlog Items (PBI) refinement.
Another important responsibility of the Product Manager is to define the “Acceptance Criteria” and
ensure that they are met.
SBOK Guide also maintains that –
“The Product Owner is one person, not a committee. The Product Owner may represent the desires of
a committee in the Product Backlog, but those wanting to change a Product Backlog item’s priority
must address the Product Owner.”

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The Scrum Master
As the name indicates, the Scrum Master is one of the most important members of the Scrum Core
Team.
A Scrum Master is a “Servant Leader”. He is expected to have maximum influence and impact but has
minimum to almost no authority.
The primary objective of the Scrum Master is to promote the Scrum Methodology as per the SBOK Guide
and help everyone involved understand the Scrum theory, values, practices, roles and events.
But, overall a Scrum Master is a “facilitator”. He ensures the development teams are provided with a
conducive environment to function in a self-organizing manner.
The Scrum Master helps the Development Team and the Product Owner to identify and remove
impediments.
Scrum Master also helps the Product Owner understand, adopt and practice scrum to perform his
activities successfully.
Overall a Scrum Master is a SME and enables scrum adoption across the organization.
Let us look at the Scrum Master’s service to the Product Owner, Development Team and Organization in
detail below.

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Product Owner Development Team Organization
Finding techniques for
effective Product Backlog
management
Coaching the Development
Team in self-organization
and to work cross-
functionally
Leading and coaching the
organization in its Scrum
adoption
Helping the Scrum Team
understand the need for
clear and concise Product
Backlog items
Helping the Development
Team to create high-value
products
Planning Scrum
implementations within the
organization
Understanding product
planning in an empirical
environment
Removing impediments to
the Development Team’s
progress
Helping employees and
stakeholders understand and
practice Scrum and empirical
product development
Ensuring the Product Owner
knows how to arrange the
Product Backlog to maximize
value
Coaching the Development
Teams within the
organization
Enabling changes that increases
the productivity of the Scrum
Team
Understanding and
practicing agility
Help understand and adopt
Scrum Methodology
Enable Scrum adoption to
achieve business value
Facilitating Scrum events as
requested or needed
Facilitating Scrum events as
requested or needed
Working with other Scrum
Masters to increase the
effectiveness of the application
of Scrum in the organization

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The Development Team
The Development Team consists of professionals who do the work of delivering a potentially releasable
Increment of “Done” product at the end of each Sprint.
Only members of the Development Team create the Increment.
Basic Attributes of the Development Team:
• Self-Organizing: The Development Team selects the work that it is supposed to do during the
Sprint. No one, not even the Scrum Master/PO tells the Development Team how they are going
to deliver the potentially releasable increment.
• Cross-Functional: The Development Team has all the necessary skill-set required to convert the
selected Product Backlog items into a potentially releasable increment.
• Size: The optimal size for the Development Team is 3-9 members. With less than 3 members,
the Development Team may not have enough skill-set to create the potentially releasable
increment. Having more than 9 members on the Development Team may create additional
complexity which might be difficult to be managed with the empirical process.
• Title: There is only one title in the Development Team and that is “Developer”. Scrum recognizes
no other titles. It also discards the notion of sub-teams.
Accountability:
The Development team is accountable for delivering an increment of potentially releasable “Done”
product at the end of the Sprint. The Development Team is also accountable for the quality of the
“Done” product increment as per the acceptance criteria.
Overview of the Development Team
• Cross-functional, multi-learning and self-organizing, and while individuals often have specialized
skills or areas of focus, accountability belongs to the team as a whole
• Build and deliver the potentially shippable product increment from planning, analysis, design,
programming and testing
• Development Teams tend to have between 3 to 9 team members. Preferably dedicated.
• Responsible for building the actual product Increment
• Performs the development and testing of the product
• Outlines the tasks that need to be completed in order to develop a feature/user story
• Should be full-time
• Ideally, membership should change only between sprints

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• Strong Cross Matrix of skillset with Developers having enough insight to ask business questions
o Works with the Product Owner to drive ambiguity lower
o Works to continuously improve the application and the methods/processes the team
utilizes
• Members are dynamic with enough experience to be able to handle a variety of coding
elements, for example:
o .NET developer who is able to perform a DBA low level task
o DBA/ETL duties should be combined within a single resource
o All resources should be geared toward Test Driven Development and be able to perform
testing
o Business Analyst should have Data Analyst skillset with a Quality Assurance mindset and
ability to formulate Acceptance Criteria with Product Owner
Summary
Agile Methodology maintains distinct roles and responsibilities of the Scrum team thereby enabling
absolute collaboration, swift conflict resolution and increases the team’s accountability and ownership.
The guiding principle being “self-organizing” goes a long way in making the team responsible towards
their goals. They choose what going to be done within a sprint and how long will be the sprint.
Overall, a product increment is delivered faster and with quality as the focus is on an increment instead
of a huge delivery thereby reducing distractions and improving execution.

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