Scrum Teams are self-managed and cross-functional, meaning they internally decide who does what, when, and how. They have all competencies needed to accomplish the work without depending on others not part of the team and choose how best to completed their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team and designed to optimize flexibility, creativity, and productivity.
The Scrum Team is small, typically 10 or fewer people as smaller teams communicate better and are more productive. If Scrum Teams become too large, they should consider reorganizing into multiple cohesive Scrum Teams, each focused on the same product. Therefore, they should share the same Product Goal, Product Backlog, and Product Owner.
The Scrum Team is responsible for all product-related activities from stakeholder collaboration, verification, maintenance, operation, experimentation, research and development, and anything else that might be required.
Scrum defines three specific accountabilities within the Scrum Team: the Developers, the Product Owner, and the Scrum Master.
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The Product Owner is accountable for maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Scrum Team. How this is done may vary widely across organizations, Scrum Teams, and individuals.
The Product Owner is also accountable for effective Product Backlog management, which includes:
Communicate vision and value to the Development Team
Developing and explicitly communicating the Product Goal
Creating and clearly communicating Product Backlog items
Ordering Product Backlog items
Ensuring that the Product Backlog is transparent, visible and understood.
Ensuring the Development Team understands items in the Product Backlog to the level needed
Leverage Scrum for frequent product inspection and adaptation
The Product Owner may do the above work or may delegate the responsibility to others. Regardless, the Product Owner remains accountable.
For Product Owners to succeed, the entire organization must respect their decisions. These decisions are visible in the content and ordering of the Product Backlog, and through the inspectable Increment at the Sprint Review.
The Scrum Master is accountable for establishing Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide. They do this by helping everyone understand Scrum theory and practice, both within the Scrum Team and the organization.
The Scrum Master is accountable for the Scrum Team’s effectiveness. They do this by enabling the Scrum Team to improve its practices, within the Scrum framework. Scrum Masters are true leaders who serve the Scrum Team and the larger organization.
Scrum Master service to the Scrum Team
Coaching the team members in self-management and cross-functionality
Helping the Scrum Team focus on creating high-value Increments that meet the Definition of Done
Causing the removal of impediments to the Scrum Team’s progress
Ensuring that all Scrum events take place and are positive, productive, and kept within the timebox
The Scrum Master service to the Product Owner
Helping find techniques for effective Product Goal definition and Product Backlog management
Helping the Scrum Team understand the need for clear and concise Product Backlog items
Helping establish empirical product planning for a complex environment
Facilitating stakeholder collaboration as requested or needed
The Scrum Master service to the organization
Leading, training, and coaching the organization in its Scrum adoption
Planning and advising Scrum implementations within the organization
Helping employees and stakeholders understand and enact an empirical approach for complex work
Removing barriers between stakeholders and Scrum Teams
The Delivery Team consists of professionals who do the work of delivering a potentially releasable Increment of “Done” product at the end of each Sprint. The Development Teams are structured and empowered by the organization to organize and manage their own work.
The specific skills needed by the Developers are often broad and will vary with the domain of work. Developers are always accountable for:
Creating a plan for the Sprint, the Sprint Backlog
Instilling quality by adhering to a Definition of Done
Adapting their plan each day toward the Sprint Goal
Holding each other accountable as professionals
Other Roles
Some organizations may have enabler roles that are not part of the Scrum Team to support their business practices and culture, which fall outside the Scrum Framework. These roles and responsibilities vary widely across organizations and may include:
Direction of corporate strategy
Growth of individuals and team
Project Level Performance and Quality Reporting
Staffing and Resource Onboarding
Performance reviews and career development
Establish engineering standards and best practices
Provide necessary tools, processes and policies
Define engineering and quality standards/strategy
Owner of organizational level obstacles
Design a lean organization/team structure
Develop leaders who lead teams
Lead the organization through change
Address organizational issues that get in the way of team(s).
Be more strategic, less tactical
Customer and market research by analyzing the industry and competition
Identifies customer needs and voice of the customer
Drives Pl objectives and release content via prioritized features and enablers
Maximize value, revenues and return on investment
Owner of the product vision, program backlog, product strategy and roadmap
Ensuring requirements that impact other projects (internal and external) are submitted to the other products’ requirements lists or backlogs
Release planning, execution and product launch
Product sustaining and retirement
Business case development and realization
Responsible for value delivery through business ecosystem
Establishes feature acceptance criteria
Responsible for feature, schedule and cost trade offs
Brings products to market
Validating with Product Owner that the release is operating as expected
Support Product Owner with priorities and requirements