For the Agile Alliance I wrote an experience report about how to overcome the struggling many organisation have in getting the various roles in place. In this experience report I will share my approach with striving for role agreements. The report is the fundament under my talk on the XP2020 conference
In order to have effective teams it is crucial that everyone understands their role. In small organisations I had success with mission statements for e.g. the Scrum Master and Product Owner. But what approach do you choose in a large department where opinions varies from team to team and exceptions rule? Where management is in a transition from traditional management toward agile leadership?
I learned that in a multiple team session the search for a single truth is futile and it is better to stimulate communication and alignment. The result of this approach was that a dialogue was started, and PO, SM and managers aligned rather than getting stuck in a discussion on the formal role description.
In the report I share the mission statements I used and the approach we took to get role agreement between PO and manager. This yielded in some insight on how we wanted to share responsibilities between the SM, PO, Manager and the Team. The article lists this in a big overview, that you can use to discuss and align the roles in your own organisation.
Derk-Jan de Grood 