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Meaning of Developer in Scrum Events

Last post 07:02 pm July 28, 2021 by Ian Mitchell
3 replies
Katherine Worley
01:32 pm July 28, 2021

Hi, in the scrum guide section  for dailies there is the sentence "If the Product Owner or Scrum Master are actively working on items in the Sprint Backlog, they participate as Developers. " I assume that this also applies to retrospectives but not planning or reviews. What do you think ?

Thomas Owens
02:02 pm July 28, 2021

The whole Scrum Team, which includes the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Developers, participates in the Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective events. When describing these events, the Scrum Guide refers to creating a plan "by the collaborative work of the entire Scrum Team", ensuring that the "Scrum Team presents the results of their work to key stakeholders", and that "the Scrum Team inspects how the last Sprint went with regards to individuals, interactions, processes, tools, and their Definition of Done".

Only the Daily Scrum is "for the Developers of the Scrum Team". However, the Developers may choose to invite the Product Owner and/or Scrum Master and how these people participate in the event.

Tomasz Głowacki
02:15 pm July 28, 2021

The whole Scrum Team participates in sprint retrospective, sprint review and sprint planning. New scrum guide puts the accent on the Scrum Team as a whole. The only distinction is done for daily scrum, to make sure the meeting is for Developers only. So SM and PO participate in these meetings anyway. 

If SM or PO work actively on sprint backlog items, is seems quite logical for me that they could share their point of view (as "Developers") during sprint review or sprint planning. 

Ian Mitchell
07:02 pm July 28, 2021

I assume that this also applies to retrospectives but not planning or reviews.

Why not? What advantage would this reduction in transparency and feedback provide? Wouldn't such a team member have valuable insights to offer, deriving from each of their accountabilities, in all three of these events?

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