Analysis of the Effectiveness of Combining the Roles Ofscrummaster and Product Owner Inscrum-Teams

Abstract

Over the past decade, agileapproaches, including Scrum, have become increasingly used in other spheres of human activity. Due to the peculiarity in the management structure of IT organizations, namely the possibility of personnel career growth in the models “junior-middle-senior”or “tech-lead-team lead-project manager”, there is a temptation to combine various project roles in the work activity. Leadership positions are often held by people who were very recently technical specialists and, for the most part, did not receive special training as management personnel. The article discusses the issue related to the possibility of combiningthe functions of the scrum master and the product owner when implementing projects using Agile. The application of the logic of the role model of the manager according to I. Adizes is considered, as well as the correspondence of the roles of the scrum master andthe product owner to the elements of the PAEI profile. It is proposed to consider such a characteristic of an effectiveproject team as self-organization from the point of view of group dynamics and the need to distribute roles among team members.The paper puts forward a hypothesis about the need for both managerial training of project team members and the importance of studying soft skills, skills that are associated with the foundations of organizational and social psychology.

Task execution flow management in the software development process under the minor change event

“…Articles [3,9] thoroughly emphasizes the advantages of flexible methodologies (Agile) in a rapidly changing environment. Indeed, this family of project management methodologies is oriented towards satisfying the customer as a key value.…”

“…Commonly known solutions for planning work on software projects, which allow for task scheduling over a specific work period (release, sprint in the Scrum methodology, etc.) [1,2], [3] include products such as Atlassian Jira, MS Project, Primavera, Redmine, and to some extent, nextgeneration products like Trello, Asana, and similar ones. However, during the execution of a planned block of tasks, numerous unforeseen tasks arise, such as emergencies, urgent client inquiries, immediate management requests, and others, requiring resolution within a relatively short timeframe.…”

“…In practice, research [6] shows that less than 15% of teams declaring the use of Agile/Scrum methodologies actually adhere to basic agile principles [1,3], [5]. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that in more than 85 % of teams working with flexible methodologies, engineers and managers rely on empirical approaches to reprioritize tasks in situations of micro-change occurrences.…”