Who should be in the development team
Hi
We are starting our first Scrum project. Our goal is to create an application which integrates various function requirements (like Finance, IT, HR etc) in one platform.
We are not sure about how to best capture each function/ domain requirements.
My question is in such situation which one from the following is the best course of action & which one is a clear NO.
- Should we have business owners from each function to be part of the development team who will help to provide details of functional requirements specific to their function
- Should product owner get clarity /details ready before the sprint planning & have only those in development team who will work on application creation
- Should we invite business owners in the sprint planning meeting to provide this domain expertise
- Should it be part of product backlog refinement where development team interacts with business owners to get the required details.
Regards
Ash
Which person is responsible for defining and maximizing product value for stakeholders, and which people would be needed to create a valuable increment of release quality, sprint by sprint?
Thanks Ian for your reply.
Let me further elaborate the situation with following scenario:
we want to create a dynamic shopping list for each user type. Based on user profile (lets say there are 3 profiles A, B & C), the user sees the list of items (lets say max 10 from possible 20 list) available to shop. This list changes based on user profile.
Now when running scrum project, Is it required to have the following detail 'which items should be displayed for which user profile type' made available in the beginning (say in product backlog) OR can we have one representative from each user profile (lets call them business owners) to be also a part of development team and work to provide this detail during the sprint.
Currently we have following statement described in the product item list << "To create a dynamic list of available items to shop based on User profile" and in the development team we have software developers and testers.
Our team thinks that we should add business owners to the development team so they can provide these details but I believe the required details should be clear right in the beginning of the sprint.
Please suggest what should be the right direction to approach in this case. Many Thanks
There is no "business owner" role in Scrum. There is a Product Owner role, an individual who may or may not also be a member of the Development Team.
My advice is to think more in terms of the roles and responsibilities as they are described in the Scrum Guide. These roles are distinct, while there is expected to be a level of collaboration throughout the Sprint which is sufficient for an increment of emergent value to be produced. This collaboration should occur irrespective of whether the PO is also a Development Team member.
In addition to Ian's response, please find my thoughts on each of your points
- Should we have business owners from each function to be part of the development team who will help to provide details of functional requirements specific to their function ==> A person should be part of the dev team only if they will work on the implementation of PBIs.
- Should product owner get clarity /details ready before the sprint planning & have only those in development team who will work on application creation ==> Yes
- Should we invite business owners in the sprint planning meeting to provide this domain expertise ==> Yes, everybody who can help clarify the work going into the upcoming sprint is welcome. Specially if it can avoid long feedback loops/email chains etc.
- Should it be part of product backlog refinement where development team interacts with business owners to get the required details. ==> Yes, direct interactions would be very beneficial. In line with the agile manifesto.