 | Know Your Role(s) |
When assigning roles, the natural tendency in a traditional business (not using an Agile-based framework) is this:
A manager is in charge of assigning all tasks and deadlines and pushing for their completion.
The result is predictable: overstressed employees (including the manager) with little ability to propose strategic changes when they emerge and no feedback until the entire product is built.
For your plan to succeed, you will need the right kinds of people assigned the right kinds of tasks. Combining any of the roles below to a single person is one of the most common pitfalls in agile implementation.
The Stakeholders
External or internal clients: executives, decision-making managers, etc.
The Product Owner
You – the person ultimately responsible for the success of the product: promoting and adjusting the product vision with stakeholders, and building and negotiating the product backlog with the development team.
The Scrum Master
The servant leader of the development team, tasked with presiding over many of the scrum ceremonies enforcing scrum/agile principles during the build and removing any hurdles the development team encounters or anticipates during the development process.
The Development (“Dev”) Team
The entire team of skilled workers who build the actual product. This includes programmers/engineers as well as any designers and / or testers.
Each role is described in greater detail in the next sections.