Professional Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010

2

Organizing a Scrum Team

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Organizing a Scrum team and understanding the roles of the team members.
• How to scale a Scrum team.
• Comparing Scrum team organization with the Microsoft Solutions Framework organization.
• How other IT roles work with a Scrum team.
• Transitioning to Scrum.

Team organization in Scrum is quite different from team organization in traditional software development projects. Rather than analysts, developers, testers, release engineers, and project managers, Scrum involves a core team of peers who are responsible for building, testing, and shipping a great product. The roles are clearly defined, but each person is responsible for a wide variety of tasks. When moving from traditional software development to Scrum, a team's composition shifts from having many roles, each with narrow responsibilities, to having fewer roles, each with broader responsibilities. This shift leads to a more collaborative, empowered team.

This chapter defines the project roles in Scrum, both in terms of their responsibilities on a project and in the context of traditional software project management strategies.

SCRUM ROLES

There are just three roles defined in Scrum:

• Product owner — The product owner determines what features go into the product.
• ScrumMaster — The ScrumMaster is responsible for project status and coordination, team productivity, and removal of impediments to progress.
• Team members — The team members are responsible for building and testing high-quality ...