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A Study of the Scrum Master’s Role

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Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 10611))

Abstract

Scrum is an increasingly common approach to software development adopted by organizations around the world. However, as organizations transition from traditional plan-driven development to agile development with Scrum, the question arises as to which Scrum role (Product Owner, Scrum Master, or Scrum Team Member) corresponds to a Project Manager, or conversely which Scrum role should the Project Managers adopt?

In an attempt to answer this question, we adopted a mixed-method research approach comprising a systematic literature review and a case study of a commercial software development team. Our research has identified activities that comprise the Scrum Master role, and which additional roles are actually performed by Scrum Masters in practice.

We found ten activities that are performed by Scrum Masters. In addition, we found that Scrum Masters also perform other roles, most importantly as Project Managers. This latter situation results in tension and conflict of interest that could have a negative impact on the performance of the team as a whole.

These results point to the need to re-assess the role of Project Managers in organizations that adopt Scrum as a development approach. We hypothesize that it might be better for Project Managers to become Product Owners, as aspects of this latter role are more consistent with the traditional responsibilities of a Project Manager .

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Acknowledgments

We thank the members of TeamA and members of the Project Management Team for their generous and thoughtful collaboration on this study, and PracMed, for allowing us to study their software development efforts. This work was supported, in part, by Science Foundation Ireland grants 10/CE/I1855 and 13/RC/2094 to Lero - the Irish Software Research Centre (www.lero.ie).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of East London, University Way, London, E16 2RD, UK

    John Noll

  2. Lero, The Irish Software Research Centre, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Mohammad Abdur Razzak & Sarah Beecham

  3. University of Salford, The Crescent, Salford, M5 4WT, UK

    Julian M. Bass

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  1. John Noll
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  2. Mohammad Abdur Razzak
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  3. Julian M. Bass
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  4. Sarah Beecham
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Correspondence to John Noll .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

    Michael Felderer

  2. Technical University Munich, Garching, Germany

    Daniel Méndez Fernández

  3. Brunel University London, Uxbridge, United Kingdom

    Burak Turhan

  4. Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Marcos Kalinowski

  5. University College London, London, United Kingdom

    Federica Sarro

  6. Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria

    Dietmar Winkler

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Noll, J., Razzak, M.A., Bass, J.M., Beecham, S. (2017). A Study of the Scrum Master’s Role. In: Felderer, M., Méndez Fernández, D., Turhan, B., Kalinowski, M., Sarro, F., Winkler, D. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10611. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69926-4_22

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