Roles outside the Scrum Team

Throughout this work, I call stakeholders those people who have a relevant interest in the development of a product. For example, those who are directly involved in or contributing to that development and those who are directly affected by or advocate for interests that may be affected by its results. Examples may include customers, sponsors, executives, managers, departments of the organization (legal and marketing, for example), regulatory agencies and trade associations. In addition, of course, to the Scrum Team itself.

I call customers only those people, groups – whether internal or external to the organization – or organizations that request or contract the product’s development and, in some way, receive the value generated, since what is produced will be released to them or their users. I call users those who actually receive and use the product. Customers can also be users.

In Scrum, there is no definition of the role of a project manager. When Scrum is used in the execution of a project, issues such as scope, deadline, quality, risk, processes, and work management are not under the responsibility of a single central role. Rather, they are distributed among the Product Owner, the Developers, and the Scrum Master, each with their own accountabilities. Thus, we should not and cannot map the role of a traditional project manager to the accountabilities of Scrum.

Functional matters such as team building, hiring, promotions, layoffs, vacations, career plans, etc. are very specific to the context of each organization. As such, we have observed different solutions for each of them and there is no treatment defined by the Scrum framework. Other managerial functions such as contract generation, pricing, portfolio management, etc. are also outside the scope of Scrum.