Student QA: Design on the Scrum Team & Multiple Roles w/ Derek Huether

This post originally appeared on  LeadingAgile's Field Notes.
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Design and Cross Functional Teams (2:11 )

“Every time I hear you speak about cross-functional team I am not sure who these teams comprise of exactly. In my world the confusion here is most often related to design inputs. Any digital product will have a visual UI and thus its development will require design inputs. Do most of Leading Agile clients consider this a separate process that contributes to the readiness of stories for a technical Scrum team? Or do you normally assume designers are a part of a Scrum team?
In my view, the former creates waterfall-like dependencies and the latter gets in the way of confident estimations. So, even if both models are feasible, none of them seems ideal, because it leaves an are that has to be tightly managed.” Submitted by Sergey via Email

Multiple Roles - ScrumMaster & Product Owner for 3 Teams (8:20)

How do you deal with a manager who thinks you should be ScrumMaster for multiple teams AND Product Owner at the same time?

This question was submitted by a student in a CSPO class who allowed me to record the question being asked as long as I promised not to post the recording or identify the person by name. In order to honor that, I played the recording for Derek before hand, but in the podcast, what you’ll hear is me (Dave) relating the question.

The question shared by the student related to the fact that they are currently playing the role of ScrumMaster on three different teams and have also been asked to act as Product Owner for these teams. The person explained to their manager that the way Scrum is designed to work, a ScrumMaster is supposed to be dedicated to a single team, should definitely not be trying to support three teams and absolutely should not be playing the role of ScrumMaster and Product Owner at the same time. The manager responded by asking that the person give a detailed account what they are doing all day as a Scrum Master because the manager did not believe the person was too busy to be able to serve as ScrumMaster for three teams and Product Owner for as those teams as well.

Contacting Derek

You can reach Derek on the LeadingAgile site at www.leadingagile.com/guides/derek-huether/
On Twitter at twitter.com/derekhuether
Or on his personal site at www.derekhuether.com

Contacting Dave

You can reach Dave on the LeadingAgile site at www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/
On Twitter at twitter.com/mrsungo
Or on his personal site at: drunkenpm.net

Feedback/Questions

If you have comments on the podcast, or have questions for the LeadingAgile coaches that you’d like to have addressed in a future episode of LeadingAgile’s SoundNotes, you can reach Dave at dave.prior@leadingagile.com

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