Common Myths about Developers

  • Each Developer should have all the skills necessary to deliver the product
    Why is this a myth?  It’s true that each Scrum Team should have all the cross-functional skills necessary to deliver their work. However, it’s not true that each Developer has to have all the skills necessary, or that each Developer has to have the identical skills. Scrum Teams in total are cross-functional, but individual Developers may have different, specialized skills. This myth may have derived from the fact that everyone involved in creating the product is called a “Developer” and they do not have titles based on their specialty.
     
  • “Developer” really means “Software Developer;” Scrum is only for software teams
    Why is this a myth? Scrum is for creating solutions to complex problems. These problems include many domains other than software development. Developers on a Scrum Team must have whatever development skills are necessary to create the product in their domain.
     
  • Developers have no role in deciding what they do. For example, they simply take the next PBI from the top of the Sprint Backlog
    Why is this a myth?  One of the key tenets of agile practices in general, and Scrum in particular, is to put decision-making in the hands of the people doing the work. Rather than being directed to do certain work, Scrum teams are self-managing. They must be given the space to determine how to do their work. This is true within the Scrum Team as well. Developers must be empowered to determine whether they are the right person to work on the next backlog item.
     
  • Developers spend too much time in meetings
    Why is this a myth? The Scrum Events are designed to provide regular opportunities for enacting the Scrum pillars of inspection, adaptation and transparency. Having regular meetings, each with a specific outcome and time constraint, reduces the number of ad hoc meetings that are necessary once someone realizes that a problem has occurred.
     

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The Developers are the Scrum Team members that create the product. They have specific accountabilities to the team. Learn about these accountabilities and debunk a few myths about being a Developer on a Scrum Team.