Scrum Express Roles
The players that are involved in Scrum express can be widdled down to the following:
Product Managers
The Product Managers make up the Product Management Team and they are in charge of deciding what features will be developed and when they will be developed. Product Managers include our Customers (or a representative from the Customer's organization) and our Project Lead.
Product Tester
One of the product managers (usually from the client side) will be put in charge of reviewing features when they are released to Staging. The product tester has the power to send things back for revisions or approve them for Production release.
Designers
Coming Soon.
Developers
Coming Soon.
Staging Pusher
This is usually one of the developers and is the person in charge of pushing features to the Staging application they will be available for the Product Tester to review and approve.
Production Pusher
This is usually the project lead and is the developer in charge of pushing features to the Production application where it will be live to the real users.
Sprint Presenter
This is usually one of the developers and is the person in charge of putting together and presenting the Sprint Demo.
Project Lead
The Project Lead is a special 'jack of all trades' role that is usually fulfilled by a Senior BiteSite developer. The project lead acts as the bridge between the Design Team, Development Team and the Product Management team. In essence, they are a product manager who has development experience.
Example Setups
Even though they're are a lot of roles here, a lot of these roles can be (and often are) fulfilled by the same person. Here is an example setup.
Let's say we have a client and the main representative from that client is named Gus. For this project, the client actually has hired their own developer, Denis, and BiteSite will provide 2 developers, Chris and Jack, and a project lead, Casey. With these people, here's an example of how the roles might be fulfilled:
- Gus - Product Manager, Product Tester
- Casey - Project Lead, Production Pusher, Developer
- Chris - Developer, Sprint Presenter
- Jack - Developer
- Denis - Developer, Staging Pusher
What about Product Owners and Scrum Masters?
We know that classic Scrum uses two very important roles: a Product Owner and a Scrum Master.
In terms of the Product Owner, rather than a single person, we find in our projects, this is better fulfilled by the Product Management team - a group with representation from the client and representation from BiteSite. That being said, the Product Management team follows the same principles as a Product Owner.
In terms of the Scrum Master, while we very much respect the idea of a Scrum Master and rules surrounding keeping Scrum Master and Product Owner separate, we've felt that our Scrum Express teams generally respect the rules of Scrum Express. Not to mention, Scrum Express tends to be a bit more flexible than Scrum. What we find works best is the project lead reminding the team when they are violating the rules, and facilitating discussions around adhering and breaking the rules of Scrum Express.