Engineering Process and Roles

The product owner

Product Owner is a role within Agile teams and in our company, belongs to the Project Management framework. He/she is responsible for maximizing the value of the product, which is a result of the work done by the Development Department. The Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the Product Backlog. The Scrum Master is a servant-leader for the Scrum Team. The Scrum Master helps those outside the Scrum Team understand which of their interactions with the Scrum Team are helpful and which aren't. The Scrum Master helps everyone change these interactions to maximize the value created by the Scrum Team. Even that Scrum Master is a different role, in our current implementation of the Scrum framework, the Product Owner serves it. In this setup, the Product Owner scope is:

• Ensure arranging the Product Backlog to maximize value.

• Find techniques for effective Product Backlog management.

• Understanding and practicing Agility.

• Ensuring everyone on the team has a context on the product Business goal and scope.

• Ensuring that the Product Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all, and shows what the Scrum Team will work on next.

• Ensuring the Development Department understands items in the Product Backlog to the level needed.

• He/She is a single entry point for any communication and work that needs to be done by the Development Department.

• Helping the team understand the need for clear and concise Product Backlog items.

• Understand product planning in an empirical environment.

• Facilitate the Scrum events as requested or needed.

• Coaching the Development Department in self-organization and cross-functionality.

• Coach the Development Department in the framework Scrum.

• Help the Development Department to create high-value products.

• Remove impediments to the Development Department's progress.

The development Department

The Development Department consists of professionals who do the work of delivering a potentially releasable Increment - a portion of "Done" product items at the end of each Sprint. The teams in this department are structured and empowered by the organization to manage their work. The result is optimized overall efficiency and effectiveness. Here are their treats:

• They are self-organizing.

• The teams are cross-functional, with all the skills needed to create a product Increment.

• Scrum recognizes no titles nor sub-teams for team members, regardless of the work performed or domains like testing, architecture, operations, or business analysis.

• Accountability and responsibility belong to the Development Department as a whole, despite specialized skills and areas of focus.

• Each team member owns his tickets and tracks their statuses during the whole process and progress as well as corresponding pull requests and branches.

• Each team member must ensure the reviewer and QA have enough information to test the corresponding ticket. It goes both ways; if you do not have context, ask the person to bring it to you.

• Each member is responsible for making sure all the dependencies on his/her ticket are taken care of, and everyone is notified as needed.

• Each team member can request a holiday before the upcoming Sprint, so the capacity of the team is known, there is time to find a replacement when needed and possible, and Sprint Planning can be executed properly without endangering the overall team productivity and efficiency.

• Technical specification documentation is part of development work (Self-documented code or product space's KB in Confluence).

• Functional specification documentation is a user guide made by the QA's (Academy for public features, Confluence for internal/sensitive features).

• Each team member logs the spent time working on a ticket daily.

• Each team member respects and acts with integrity and is not afraid to ask for help from his/her colleagues.

In this chapter, we explored the roles and responsibilities within an Agile team, specifically focusing on the Product Owner and the Development Department. The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing product value and managing the Product Backlog, while the Development Department focuses on delivering potentially releasable product increments. Both roles work collaboratively to ensure effective product development, with the Product Owner facilitating Scrum events and the Development Department embracing self-organization, cross-functionality, and accountability.