Agile Roles & responsibilities

Changing Roles in AgileUnderstand how roles & responsibilities in traditional organization and management change in Agile/Scrum process framework

Ravi TadwalkarAgile Coach, WD;

Co-founder, “Cisco Internal Coaches Network”;Event Organizer, AgileCamp.org & SVALN

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Agenda

• Agile Roles

• Major Cultural Shifts in transitioning to Agile

– Emergent Requirements ( and UX)

– Emergent design (and testing)

– Tracking & Oversight

• Sample Agile RACI matrix

• Summary

Agile Roles in an Organization

Agile Roles

ScrumTeam Member

(dev & test)

ScrumMaster (SM)

ProductOwner

PO)

Customers(s)

3 main roles:•Product Owner (PO)•Scrum Master (SM)•Scrum team member

Other pertinent roles: •Proxy-PO, •User Experience Lead, •Architect, •Internal Coach/Mentor, •Agile Program Manger, •Functional Manager, and •Agile Product/Portfolio Manager

Shift #1: Emergent Requirements• What is it?

– From waterfall-like “Big Requirements Up Front” (BRUF) to “emergent requirements” to drive just enough architecture.

• Major Impacted Areas – Marketing: Product /Portfolio Management – Usability

• Possible Agile Roles– Product Owner (PO)– Proxy-PO– User Experience Lead– Internal Coach/Mentor

Product Owner (PO)Role:

• Owns the vision and definition of the product.

• Represents the VoC (voice of the customer).

• Ensures that the scrum team(s) work on “right things” from the business perspective.

Recommendation:

• One can break this role down differently based on BU or location

• The subject matter expert (SME) - the one who knows *what* to build the most- becomes the PO. We recommend that you have your marketing guy to help you on evolving product backlog, with the help of other SMEs

• Traditional Product Manager works with the PO

Caveats:

• PO needs to avoid waterfall-like BRUF (Big Requirements Up Front) syndrome and get used to doing “emergent requirements” to drive just enough architecture.

• PO may not scale to cover all scrum teams.

– If PO is not always available to the team for clarification and for acceptance, then the alternative is to have someone take on the Proxy-PO role.

– Sometimes Dev Managers / Technical Leaders can take Proxy-PO role in conjunction with PO.

Proxy-PO

Role:• Assists the PO with story writing, even though PO owns prioritizing

and validating stories along with acceptance criteria.

Recommendation:• Proxy-PO is ideally co-resident with distributed scrum team. • Proxy-PO is needed due to location & band-width issues of PO, • Typically, Director of Product Marketing assigns proxy-PO.

Caveats:• Watch out for tacit information lost in translation between PO &

the Proxy. • Not having Proxy-PO may cause back-ending during iteration.

PO / Proxy-PO Responsibilities

• Observable behaviors:

*Scrum Activities include Sprint Planning, Daily Standup meeting, Sprint Retrospective meeting and Sprint Review/Demo meeting.

Product Owner Behaviors Portfolio

Planning

Sprint 0 Formal

Commit

Scrum

Activities

Scrum

of

Scrums

Engages The Customer

Communicates Product Vision

Prioritizes and Grooms Backlog

Participates On Teams

Verbally Clarifies User Stories

Accepts User Stories

Facilitates Demos

Reports Release Status

User Experience Lead

Role:• Owns the vision and definition of the product UX (user experience). • Represents the voice of the end user. • Ensures the scrum team works on “right things” from a usability

perspective.

Recommendation: • Often this role is filled by - preferably local - Interaction Designer. • Sometimes Visual Designer, Product Manager, or Engineer can serve as

Proxy-UE Lead.

Caveat(s):• Watch out for scenarios where Interaction Designers may not scale to

cover all scrum teams. Reason could be waterfall-like BRUF/BDUFsymptom of creating “perfect” UX. Try to make them work with PO in evolutionary mode, for incremental delivery.

UE Lead ResponsibilitiesObservable behaviors:

User Experience Lead Behaviors Portfolio

Planning

Sprint 0 Formal

Commit

Scrum

Activities

Scrum of

Scrums

Defines User Experience Concept

Plans UE-related Deliverables

Creates Wireframes, Visual Comps, and

Visual Assets As Part Of Preparing User

Stories To Be Ready For Implementation.

Supports Scrum Team To Deal With Issues

And To Answer UI-related Questions

Partners With PO To Review/Accept

UI-related User Stories

Plans And Runs Usability Studies

Supports Product Owner In Customer

Engagement Activities

Internal Coach/Mentor

Role:• Provide coaching to Scrum Team by observing, consulting and

providing feedback for improvement.

Recommendation:• Typically coaching is performed by very experienced Scrum

Masters/ POs who have been trained by other agile coaches in the internal coaching network.

Caveat(s):• There are well known coaching “traps”- failure modes- via any of

these self-explanatory labels: spy, seagull, opinionator, admin, hub, butterfly, theoretician and nag.

• These failure modes are results of ego or partial attention.

Internal Coach/Mentor Responsibilities

• Observable behaviors:Agile Coach Behaviors* Sprint 0 Scrum

Activities Scrum of Scrums

Formal Commit

Portfolio Planning

Evangelizes Agile

Effectively Trains Others In Agile Principles and Practices

Provides Subject Matter Expertise On Best Practices

Applies Product and Organizational Knowledge

Enforces Agile Principles

Holds Team Accountable

Communicates Effectively

*Internal Agile Coaches can be: - Team-level Agile Coaches, where they will be specialized in coaching Scrum Teams, or - Program-level Agile Coaches, where they will be focused on Portfolio Planning, stage-gates such as formal Commit, Scrum of Scrums, and Sprint 0.

Shift #2: Emergent Design (testing)

• What is it? – Design will emerge as functionality is being

delivered incrementally

• Major Impacted Areas– Architecture

– Development

– Test

• Possible Agile Roles– Architect

– Scrum Team Member (Dev & Test)

– Internal Coach/Mentor (Team Level player-coach)

ArchitectRole:

• A technical expert who works with the Scrum Team and Product Owner to ensure technical alignment and success of the product.

Recommendation

• The traditional architect/ Technical Lead role usually maps to the architect in agile.

Caveat(s):

• Architect needs to avoid waterfall-ish BDUF (Big Design Up Front) syndrome to get used to doing “emergent design” for just enough architecture.

• Architects should be present in daily stand ups to understand blockers and post-meeting get into a solutioning mode

Architect Responsibilities-

• Observable behaviors:

*Architects may also be Scrum Team Members or Proxy-Product Owners.

Architect Behaviors* Portfolio

Planning

Formal

Commit

Sprint 0 Scrum

Activities

Scrum of

Scrums

Provides Mentoring

Support Product Owner, eg. So That

Stories Are Implementable

Drives Refactoring

Provides Clear Architectural

Direction

Supports Mid- and Long Range

Roadmapping

Provides Subject Matter Expertise

Ensures Strong, Most Appropriate,

Development Methods Are Followed

Insures Implementation Supports

Testability, Scalability, Performance,

Security, etc.

Scrum Team Member -

Role:• A dedicated cross-functional team member that may be in a QA,

DOC, DEV, or UE job function focused on completing user stories.

Recommendation:• Engineers in existing team (QA, DOC, DEV, or UE) structure usually

map to Scrum team member role.

Caveat(s):• For some BUs, cross-functional team formation may not happen, so

there are some combinations possible e.g. “marketing + DEV”, where DEV does testing.

• Some scrum team members are shared across teams, e.g. DBA.

Scrum Team Member Responsibilities-

• Observable behaviors:

*Swarming is working in small cross-functional groups to rapidly complete high priority tasks.

Scrum Team Member Behaviors Portfolio

Planning

Sprint 0 Formal

Commit

Scrum

Activities

Scrum

of

Scrums

Cross-trains/Mentors Team

Members

Estimates Tasks Accurately

Takes On New Unfamiliar Tasks

Decomposes User Stories Into

Tasks

Swarms* With Other Scrum Team

Members

Provides Timely Status To The

Team

Participates Actively In The Team

Makes And Meets Commitments

Shift #3: Tracking & Oversight

• What is it ? – Tracking work pending vs. % complete

• Major impacted Areas– Program Management– Handling Impediments– Management by Objectives

• Possible Agile Roles– SM– Agile Program Manger– Functional Manager– Internal Coach/Mentor (Team Level)

Scrum MasterRole:

• A servant leadership role that is responsible for enforcing agile values and practices at team level

• SM ensures that scrum team is fully functional, productive and focused on the goal.

Recommendations

• Anyone - properly trained - can potentially fill this role.

• For SM role, you may want to find a person who knows *how* to “Get Things Done” with excellent facilitation skills, someone who can get the best out of team to work on what PO specifies. This is very much like an architect/lead that the team looks up to for design decisions/facilitation.

Caveat(s):

• Keep in mind that a Functional Manager in this role may struggle with the shift to servant leadership.

• SM does not assign tasks and needs to move away from “command & control”

• SM sets up the team for failure if s/he does not track burn down charts and/or CFDs

SM Responsibilities

• Observable behaviors:

*Scrum Activities include Sprint Planning, Daily Standup meeting, Sprint Retrospective meeting and Sprint Review/Demo meeting.

Scrum Master Behaviors Portfoli

o

Plannin

g

Sprint 0 Formal

Commit

Scrum

Activities *

Scrum

of

Scrum

s

Trains Team Members

Removes Impediments

Runs and Facilitates Scrum

Meetings

Protects Teams From

Distractions

Enforces Agile Principles

Holds Team Accountable

Provides Status

Works With Product Owner To

Assure Readiness To Sprint

Agile Program Manger

Role:• A member of the Program Management Office (PMO) who works with product

owner, scrum masters and others (as identified by the organization) to ensure that:– the program executes according to the overall program plan, – the program stays within the committed boundaries (resources, schedule, content, quality)

and goals as defined in the commit process

Recommendations:• Agile Office is different from a traditional PMO and is required for organizational

transformation and sustenance. Here is experience report from Agile 2011 event.• Agile Program Manager leads the creation of Agile Office.

Caveat(s):• It can be challenging to update project plans (Gantt charts) based on team’s

burndown data. • It’s reasonable to try to attain match between scrum team’s release plan and PMO

level program/project plan. Trying to match program plan with sprint plans at the detailed level will not be productive.

Agile Program Manager Responsibilities

• Observable behaviors:

*Program Managers indirectly support the Portfolio Planning process, by providing relevant historical, statistical, and capacity tactical data.

Agile Program Manager

Behaviors

Portfolio

Planning

*

Sprint 0 Formal

Commit

Scrum

Activities

Scrum

of

Scrums

Drives The Commit Preparation

Activities

Facilitates The Scrum Of Scrums

Facilitates Escalation and

Removal Of Impediments

Monitors Program Progress

Monitors Compliance With

Corporate and ISO Requirements

Facilitates Agile Commit (aka

“hybrid scrum” stage gate)

Facilitates Creation Of The

Program Plan

Facilitates Communication With

Dependent Groups

Manages External Dependencies

Agile Functional Manager

Role:• Support Scrum Team members to learn, grow and perform, while

maintaining departmental responsibility and accountability for achieving business results.

Recommendation:• Usually Dev & Test Managers fit in this role. Technical directors may

also be good fit.

Caveat(s):• Watch out for the drift back to old command-and-control behaviors

by manager assigning tasks to team rather than team choosing it.• Avoid confusing people management with project management –

the former is done by the functional manager- and NOT latter.

Agile Functional Manager: CAVEATS/ Don’ts

Interesting Readings: • Pete Deemer’s

Manager 2.0: The Role of the Manager in Scrum

• Jurgen Appelo’sManagement 3.0 workouts

• Now You See It: A Peer Feedback System for Scrum Teams

Behaviors that conflict with Agile/Scrum:

• Decide what work needs to be done• Make commitments to management on

behalf of the team• About how much can team do by a certain date

• Assign the work to Team members• Do weekly status update report for

management• Keep track of what everyone on the team is doing• Make sure the Team gets their work done

Agile Functional Manager Responsibilities

• Observable behaviors:

* Agile Functional Managers may have other roles that add additional behaviors that need to be taken into account during calibration.

Agile Functional Manager Behaviors* Portfolio

Planning

Sprint

0

Formal

Commit

Scrum

Activities

Scrum of

Scrums

Provides Mentoring, “T-shaped” Skills

Development, & Career Guidance

Removes Impediments

Protects Teams From Distractions

Recruits and Hires New Team

Members

Evaluates Performance Of Team

Members- using 360 feedback and/or

calibration, etc…

Recognizes and Rewards Teams and

Individuals

Provides Subject Matter Expertise

Holds Teams and Individuals

Accountable For Their Own

Commitments

Creates An Environment Of Trust

Changing Role of Manager in Agile/ScrumCore Responsibilities Transition

StageAdditional Responsibilities

Creates an environment of trust

Removes Impediments

Protects Teams From Distractions

Retains people management responsibilities

Recognizes and Rewards agile behavior in teams and individuals

Holds teams and individuals accountable for their own commitments

Agile Newbie

• Have & set reasonable expectations about transition, i.e. team may stumble in initial phase.

• Budget time, resources for team needs e.g. Agile training, infrastructure.

Agile Practitioner • Introduce Slack to improve effectiveness over efficiency

• May participate in or sponsor Agile transition planning and execution

Agile Innovator • Support innovation by mentoring & coaching

• Foster organizational improvement

• Manage Agile Portfolio (w/ Release Planning)

• Incorporate lean principles in management

• Become member of corporate agile-lean community of practice

Sample Agile RACI matrix*

* This is only an example. Modify based on your org structure and needs!

Summary: Cultural Shifts in Agile

• Emergent Requirements ( and UX)

• Emergent design (and testing)

• Tracking & Oversight

Summary: Role of Agile Manager in Scrum

Core Responsibilities Transition Stage

Additional Responsibilities

Creates an environment of trust

Removes Impediments

Protects Teams From Distractions

Retains people management responsibilities

Recognizes and Rewards agile behavior in teams and individuals

Holds teams and individuals accountable for their own commitments

Agile Newbie

• Have & set reasonable expectations about transition, i.e. team may stumble in initial phase.

• Budget time, resources for team needs e.g. Agile training, infrastructure.

Agile Practitioner

• Introduce Slack to improve effectiveness over efficiency

• May participate in or sponsor Agile transition planning and execution

Agile Innovator

• Support innovation

• Fosteri organizational improvement

• Agile Portfolio Management

• Incorporate lean principles in management

• Effective coaches of Agile & lean principles

• Become member of corporate agile-lean community of practice

CAVEATS/ Don’ts:

Behaviors that conflict with Agile/Scrum:

• Decide what work needs to be done• Making commitments to

upper management for the team • About how much Team can do by a

certain date

• Assign the work to Team members• Watch out for the drift back to old

command-and-control behaviors by manager assigning tasks to team rather than team choosing it.

• Do weekly status update report for management

• Keep track of what everyone on the Team is doing

• Make sure the Team gets their work done

Interesting Readings: • Pete Deemer’s Manager 2.0: The Role of the

Manager in Scrum• Jurgen Appelo’s Management 3.0 workouts• Now You See It:

A Peer Feedback System for Scrum Teams