Developer

Basic

difficulty

Stage 1

Agile IQ® Level

Team

Roles

Scrum

Framework

Introduction

Developers are the people in the Scrum Team that are committed to creating any aspect of a usable Increment each Sprint.

Developer is the generic term for a team member who is ‘developing’ the solution that achieves the Sprint Goal. It applies regardless of whether the Scrum Team is a marketing team, software team, HR team, or even data management and reporting team.

Accountabilities

The specific skills needed by the Developers are often broad and will vary with the domain of work.

However, the Developers are always accountable for:

Creating a plan for the Sprint, the Sprint Backlog.
Instilling quality by adhering to a Definition of Done.
Adapting their plan each day toward the Sprint Goal.
Holding each other accountable as professionals.

EXPECTATIONS

Cross-functional

Each Developer is expected to work collaboratively with other Developers to deliver the Sprint Goal, rather than work only in their capability silos and only do work that directly reflects their capability area.

Rather than say “I’m a part of the test team”, a Developer with test capability would say “I’m part of the Scrum Team”.

Don’t overload the work in-progress

Developers are expected to help get work to Done before they take on new work into the Sprint.

The temptation is when, for example, software development tasks are done, to then start on new work before other work has reached Done. Developers are expected to work to the mantra “start finishing and stop starting”.

Myths about the role

Developers aren’t expected to:

Be a jack-of-all trades.
Be a generalist.
Do testing work if they have no experience with testing.

Developers are expected to:

Support other team members deliver the work of the Scrum Team.
Do documentation and even reports.
Be prepared to lend a hand to others.
Work within the guardrails of Scrum.
Contribute items to the Product Backlog.
Deliver work to the Definition of Done.
Hold other team members accountable for delivering quality work.
Develop skills outside their area of expertise so they can, from time to time, lend a hand.

References

1. Sutherland, J. and Schwaber, K. (2020) The Scrum Guide. The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game.