What are the roles in Scrum?

In agile Scrum, there are three roles according to the Scrum Guide 2020:

• Multidisciplinary developers and development team (3- 9 people) to further develop the product
  • tasks are mastered and determined from the product backlog in iterations
  • the team determines the tasks to be mastered according to your experience from other sprints and the expertise of the developers
  • creates an increment of software during a sprint
  • the increment is sifted by the stack holder and next sprint are prepared
  • acts self-organized (makes own decisions which task, how and when to be done) and acts collectively, together with coordination in the Scrum team
  • Hierarchies are avoided, decisions on the progress of the project team are made in the Scrum team
  • it consists of specialized technical personnel of different people
  • It actively exchanges in the Daily Scrum; the Product Owner proposes solution strategies on how to proceed in the future.



• Product Owner per development team
  • assembles the Scrum team and serves as the point of contact from the business, customers and Scrum team
  • exchanges ideas with the business, Customers and Scrum team (Stack Holder Management) on the upcoming and features and requirements of the product
  • sorts and maintains the issues and tasks into a Product Backlog (list of tasks to create a product) according to the level of value and effort
  • the Scrum team can propose changes to the Product Backlog and the Product Owner can perceive change requests
  • periodizes the Product Backlog i.e. the divides on periods of one-four weeks into a sprint and reduces or extends the Product Backlog depending on customer request
  • decides whether an increment of a software is delivered (release management)
  • In a Scrum team there is exactly one Product Owner
  • must be able to assert himself well with all stack holders (negotiate, convince..).



• Scrum Master
  • has the task to communicate the Scrum rules (he is the contact person) and to take care of the implementation
  • trains agile working and further development after Scrum Guide
  • reduces the distractions from the outside
  • organizes and optimizes the events in the Scrum
  • he supports the Scrum Product Owner in defining the user stories
  • he supports the creation of transparency and promotion of communication
  • he analyzes and recognizes the value of the experiences and insights of the Scrum team and tries to support the developers with suggestions
  • he ensures the change from a command culture to a self-organized culture
  • he ensures that the values of Scrum (commitment or self-commitment, focus, openness and transparency, courage or self-assertion, respect) are lived in the Scrum team.

The introduction of Scrum can be associated with difficulties, e.g. in established, older and long-established companies there may be specialist departments that only work together to a limited extent (establishment of silos). Scrum requires the right attitude, the courage to create new things, to reject them and to allow experimentation. Scrum is simple, deliberately incomplete, and aims at the collective intelligence of people.

The Scrum team is small (5-9 participants; by avoiding social laziness) and is multidisciplinary in structure to be able to develop a product such as a website, app or refrigerator in all task spectrums (testing, developing the software). The Scrum team must have sufficient skills. Scrum teams organize themselves independently and on their own responsibility. The Scrum team focuses on a product goal. Scrum teams must communicate well and be in the same room. It is attempted after each sprint, a period of one to four weeks of development time to create a functional increment (for example, a functionality of a software specified by the Product Owner) which creates a verifiable value. There are no hierarchies in a Scrum team. All Scrum members work together on a product backlog, a task list with the functions of the software or hardware.

When creating a Scrum team, existing position titles (such as Architect, Engineer, or Designer) remain. Roles are used to define a Scrum team, the framework of a Scrum project, and aims to promote the effectiveness and productivity of a Scrum team. A Scrum team is an interdisciplinary team and is difficult to assemble. The more complex and difficult the projects are, the more difficult it is to assemble an interdisciplinary team.