Agile scrum roles are simple and clear. However, at Cegeka we have to tune them and add roles to be able to work efficiently.
In Agile, only Scrum (not Kanban or XP) defines roles: the Product Owner, the Scrum Master and the Team.
The Product Owner has the vision for the product, sets the priorities and shields the team from interference and confusion about the scope of the project. He makes sure that the project will generate business value and guards the ROI and budget. To achieve that, this person consults all stakeholders and sees to it that there is common understanding of the requirements. He also gives feedback on the product delivered on every iteration in the demo and by (exploratory) testing. The Product Owner has the final say on the ‘what’ of the project. The ‘how’ is for the team. He is also responsible for change management and the deployment of the product.
The Scrum Master guards the (scrum) process and removes impediments which cannot be removed by the team itself. He also shields the team from interference and he challenges the team to improve.
The Team does all the rest: decide on how to build the product, build the product, guard the quality and deliver a deployable product on every iteration.
Simple, isn’t it? This should certainly work for small or in-house applications. However, reality at Cegeka and in many companies is that you often work on larger – even huge – projects or for different customers at the same time. Many IT companies, including Cegeka, work as an external supplier for a customer.
In my previous post I showed how difficult it is to find a perfect Product Owner and how the role of the Customer Proxy can help out. In this post I want to focus on the Scrum Master and why he sometimes becomes an Agile Project Manager.
Combining the role of Scrum Master and Product Owner: a good idea?
Since the Scrum Master has to guard the process, he will sometimes have to tell the Product Owner to take up his role and he will help the Product Owner in his tasks. Again with the same mindset as a Customer Proxy: the final decision is with the Product Owner.
So what about the combination of the roles of Scrum Master and Product Owner by the same person? These roles are conflicting: the Scrum Master has to shield the team from interference and guard the process. This is a role for the supplier.
On the other hand, the Product Owner challenges the team to get as much business value as possible. This is a role for the customer. See Mike Cohn’s metaphor of the pirate captain on that matter. So combining is preferably not done and if so, the person combining the roles should be very vigilant in his/her decisions.
The role of the Agile Project Manager
What about the Agile Project Manager (APM)? At Cegeka we do not have a Scrum Master, but an APM. In my opinion, that is the result of us trying to work agile in a non-agile world.
Cegeka mostly works in a customer/supplier setting with fixed price, scope and deadline projects. Therefore, we cannot leave the control of the budget up to the Product Owner alone. A lot of extra administration and negotiation is necessary and that is the role of the APM. It is an extreme version of the shielding of the team task of the Scrum Master.
Also, very often the APM takes up the role of resource manager which is necessary in a large organization, and which also entails organizing job evaluation conversations.
When a team does different projects for different customers at the same time, the APM will also have to decide how much time is spent on each project. He will have to communicate a lot with the product owners of each project to discuss the planning. He then acts as the Chief Product Owner.
Conclusion
So the APM performs a lot of tasks which should not be necessary in an ideal agile world, but which are vital for our teams in order to be able to work agile. As such, one can imagine teams having a Scrum Master (guarding the process, removing impediments …) as well as an APM. An APM can also work for several teams, while the Scrum Master Role is mostly dedicated to one team only.
In my next post I will focus on the changing role of the Team.
The post The Scrum Roles: Part 2 – The Scrum Master appeared first on Cegeka Blog.