The Truth About

Job Titles in Scrum

Dave West
Scrum.org CEO & Product Owner @davidjwest @ScrumDotOrg ©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 1
 Or…

Why is there no Tester, Project

Manager, Business Analyst, or
my job title?

©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 2

Improving the Profession of
Software Delivery

©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 3

The Home of Scrum

90% Agile Teams Use Scrum 2.13M+ Open Assessments Taken

12M+ Using Scrum daily 173k+ Professional Scrum

Certifications

Practiced everywhere Over 101,000 taught

One Scrum Guide

www.scrumguides.org 214 Professional Scrum Trainers (PSTs)

©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 4

Research on Delivering Innovation Led to…

• Self-organizing teams –
autonomous, cross-functional
• Goal-seeking, but not prescriptive
• Deliver working products in small
increments
• Learning by doing
• Simple, transparent controls
• Learning culture – wanting to share
(osmosis)

https://hbr.org/1986/01/the-new-new-product-development-game

©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 5

Remember the Types of Problems We Are Solving

How can we drive

specialist jobs until
we have an idea of
the problem we are
solving?

The Cynefin framework

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Inspection and Adaptation Requires Flexibility

Deploy and Identify an

Measure 5 1 Opportunity

Stakeholders

Customers / Users

Build at Least Understand

Part Of It 4 2 Desired Outcomes
Team

3
Evaluate
Possible Solutions
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Scrum Provides a Great Framework for That J

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Scrum Describes Three Roles

• 3 core role described in the Scrum

Product Owner Guide
• 1 additional role described in most
Development Team organizations
• These are roles NOT responsibilities
Scrum Master • Remember Scrum is a framework

Agile Leaders

©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 9

The Product Owner

• Maximizes the value of the product and the

Development Team
• Sole person responsible for managing the
Product Backlog
• Must be empowered to make decisions
about the product
• No one else is able to tell the Development
Team what to do!

©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 10

The Scrum Master

• Promotes and supports the use of Scrum

• A focus on transparency
• Is a Servant Leader
• Service to others
• Promotes a sense of community
• Holistic approach to work
• Shared decision-making power
• Serves the PO, Team, and Organization

©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 11

The Scrum Development Team

• Self-organizing in pursuit of delivering value

• Cross-functional with all the skills necessary
to deliver the work
• Small enough to be nimble, large enough to
deliver the work
• Scrum recognizes no titles other than
Development Team Member

©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 12

Something About Leadership…

• Creates an environment for agility to flourish

• Manages impediments and problems
• Coaches and supports Scrum Masters,
Product Owners, and Teams

©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 13

But What About…

Project Managers Business Analysts Testers

YOUR Job Title

©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 14

 Scrum does
not care about
job titles

©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 15

 Scrum does
not care about
job titles

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Why Scrum Cares

• All the right skills to deliver value means we need people who can
do stuff (BA’s, Testers, and PM’s all help deliver value)
• Hiring people requires job titles that describe skills. It is very hard
to say, “I want someone to do stuff.”
• For most situations, Scrum is happening within an existing
organization that has HR, job titles, promotional paths, etc.

And the team needs to feel safe and valued

©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 17

But Here Is the Rub…

Delivering Value

Ever changing
Agile Workforce
problems

Job titles
The Market

©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 18

“Traditional, rigidly defined jobs are giving way to more
agile, project-based work. The workforce is also evolving to
become more dynamic and skills led, rather than being
defined by the hierarchy of an organization. The future will
be for those who can solve unstructured problems, interpret
and synthesize new information, and use social and
communication skills,” says Payal Vasudeva, MD at
Accenture Strategy.

©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 19

A Simple Set of Things to Help Manage the Rub

• Separate Work Management from Talent / Skill / Job management

• Hard to be transparent when your boss is looking over your shoulder
• Incrementally transition to the four key roles
• Scrum Master, Team Member, Product Owner and Leader of XXXX
• Names might change for your organization
• Put in place a community / scaling / development organizational
structure that allows development, promotion, and a career
• Whatever you want to call it, people need a path. Introduce a community-driven
approach to people development.

And remember – Just because we are doing

Scrum does not mean that your skills don’t matter
©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 20
Self-Organize to Form Teams

Form teams naturally with:

• Team members who want
change (opt-in)
• Team members who want to
What motivates people? work together
1. Autonomy (self-organization)
2. Mastery • Mutually-agreed commitments
and decision processes
3. Purpose (self-direction)

Source: Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What

Motivates Us, Riverhead Hardcover, 2009
But guided by business goals
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Breaking Away from Command and Control

• Boss trumps transparency

• Hard to balance the needs of today and the needs of the future
• Scaling is about helping others not managing others
• Installing a learning culture requires an organization

VS
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After spending many years on the job, working long hours and
mastering every strange nuance of the systems you are promoted
to a management position. Responsible for others doing the work
that you know so well. After time and proving that you can play the
political game you are promoted to manage the managers. Slowly
over time you get promoted higher and higher until you retire.
Changing jobs just changes where you start. The game continues.
- Traditional Leadership

©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 23

The Journey to Master

Product Scrum

Which journey
are you on? Technical

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What Shape Are Your Team Member’s Skills?

http://www.irisclasson.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/skills.jpg

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Communities Connect People Across Teams to Share and Improve

• Share experiences and grow skills through immersion and pairing

• Use peer coaching to share knowledge and increase professionalism, consistency
• Remove common impediments
Developer
Community

Team 1

Team 1
Team 2

Team 1

Team 2 Team 3

Team 4
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The Famous Spotify Model

• Squad: similar to a Scrum Team

• Tribe: collection of Squads that
work in a related area
• Chapter: a family of people
inside a Tribe with similar skills
• Guild: a community of practice
cross Tribe

©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 27

What Does That Mean for an Organization?
ALIGNMENT TO PRODUCTS
• The most important skill is knowing
your customer
• Teams and teams of teams aligned
to deliver customer value
• Measurement based on outcomes
not work
• Organization built to serve these
customer centric groups
WORK & TALENT MANAGEMENT SEPARATED
• Management of work defined by
teams in pursuit of goals
• Talent management driven by
master, journeyperson and
apprentice model
• Management concentrates on
building and maintaining an
environment for agility to thrive
©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 28
But, What About Me?

©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 29

Project Managers

Find the role that makes the most sense for you:
•If you are more about enabling flow, driving a process, helping
Scrum Master others learn, removing impediments, and raising transparency

•If you are passionate about the solutions you provide, the
Product Owner problems that you solve, and the customer

Technical •If you want to master and share a set of skills or technology

•If you want to glue together an organization, build an

Leadership environment that supports agility, and delivering value

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Closing

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Summary

• Working in a complex environment requires empirical process, self-

organization, and a focus on improvement – that is what Scrum is.
• Job titles and specialism of labor do not naturally connect with this,
but skills do
• Focus on the three (4) roles of: Scrum Master, Team Member,
Product and Leadership
• Everyone has to understand the customer
• Decouple work management from people management
• Build community around mastery and skills development
• And focus on learning rather than job title!

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The Bottom Line

• The reality is that many organizations are in transition

• By focusing on building skills and getting closer to the customer, you are
becoming more valuable
• Management is transitioning from a focus on process / systems to a more
people centric approach
• But systems are going through a change from you serving them to them
serving you
• Agile is new to HR, but is a key part of the change

Empirical Process, Self-Organization, Plan-Centric Process, Resource

VS
Continuous Improvement Management, Top Down Change

©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 33

Thank You!

@DavidJWest

Dave.West@Scrum.org

www.scrum.org

©1993 – 2018 Scrum.org All Rights Reserved 34

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Title – The Truth About Job Titles In Scrum
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