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Scrum and job titles

Last post 05:58 pm May 7, 2018 by Gunther Firk
2 replies
11:28 pm May 6, 2018

Hello

I'd like to understand a question from the experts here - in a multi-functional Scrum team, how important are job titles? Or does Agile/Scrum focus more on the capabilities of the people to get the job done collectively?

My understanding is that apart from the Product Owner, there are no specific job titles (QA,Developer, Engineer, Architect and such).

 


12:48 am May 7, 2018

In Scrum there are only three roles: Product Owner, Development Team and Product Owner.  Job titles within the Development Team are non existent and there are no sub teams (QA, Architecture), hence there is no importance to job titles such as the ones you suggested. 

Why you may ask?  In Scrum it is more important to have a cross functional Development Team that can produce a "Done" Increment every Sprint.  If there were titles that would impair the team from becoming cross functional.  Developers may not want to be accountable for testing.  And what would happen if a tester was out sick? 

The lack of titles within the Development Team also encourages self organization and autonomy.  And the lack of sub teams and titles eliminate handoffs (from developer to tester), causing better work flow and team accountability (everyone is responsible for quality, everyone is responsible to deliver a "Done" Increment, everyone works towards the Sprint goals).  There is less us against them - the lack of titles encourages collaboration teamwork.


05:58 pm May 7, 2018

In my mind (it is just my mind) no matter what is the name of your position at your company you have to understand one very simple axiome: all scrum team members are equal to each other, no matter who you are. 

In the company where i am working this is one the biggest problem. Many product owners think that they are managers of teams and scrum masters think that they are managers of dev team.


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