Agile Roles & responsibilities

1. Changing Roles in Agile
Understand how roles & responsibilities in
traditional organization and management
change in Agile/Scrum process framework
Ravi Tadwalkar
Agile 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.

2. 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

3. Agile Roles in an Organization

4. Agile Roles
Scrum
Team Member
(dev & test)
Scrum
Master (SM)
Product
Owner
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

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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   

9. 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/BDUF
symptom of creating “perfect” UX. Try to make them work with PO in
evolutionary mode, for incremental delivery.

10. UE Lead Responsibilities
Observable 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
    

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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)

14. Architect
Role:
• 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

15. 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.
   

16. 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.

17. 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   

18. 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)

19. Scrum Master
Role:
• 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

20. 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
   

21. 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.

22. 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    

23. 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.

24. Agile Functional Manager:
CAVEATS/ Don’ts
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
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

25. 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    

26. Changing Role of Manager in Agile/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 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

27. Sample Agile RACI matrix*
* This is only an example. Modify based on your org structure and needs!

28. Summary: Cultural Shifts in Agile
• Emergent Requirements ( and UX)
• Emergent design (and testing)
• Tracking & Oversight

29. 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