Quite the loaded question. A role within a Scrum project is difficult to prescribe without fully understanding the product your trying to produce.
First of all, it's important to recognize the product owner. This role is very simple to identify: this is the person that sets the priority of your backlog (your user stories) and has the final word of approval. It's okay for UX to not be the product owner; in fact, in your organization, it's likely that this role might be filled by a business analyst or product manager. Similarly, Scrum Masters are a role that is very much dependent upon each team and project. A Scrum Master should be elected by the members of the team and not appointed unless every member of the team is unfamiliar with the working environment. Based on my experience, I would stay focused on your product. What will it take to produce it? Write stories capturing every aspect of what you seek to build, and then build a Scrum team or teams that organize every party needed to produce that product. If you can't get every resource you need on your Scrum team, that's okay. In fact, those additional resources are actually referred to as SMEs (subject matter experts) and are part of the Scrum organization. To summarize as much as possible, focus on proper story-writing and the creation of a backlog. When writing those stories, be sure to work with the product owner (the ultimate decider, if you will). At the same time, ensure that your Scrum team(s) have the members fully allocated to produce the product you're after. Every sprint should be about taking additional steps towards a releasable product, and every team member should be able to share what the one big goal for the day is in the daily stand-ups. Focus on work more than roles, and focus on getting your UX team aligned with the fellow stakeholders and developers that can help achieve what your after. If the project you're working on is UX born-and-raised (let's say, a project to implement a flexible width layout), then UX will find itself in the product owner position as only the UI developers on the UX team will be able to make the call on whether or not the work fits the bill. If the project you're working on is to implement a new payment system, then the product owner will likely be the business analyst or program manager that is most familiar with the requirements of that product. I hope this crash-course was helpful as it was very much a stream-of-consciousness dialogue. I'd highly recommend that you and your company consider some training in Scrum. A couple of days in a focused course and you'll be thinking about Scrum as a pathway towards better products and working environment rather than a fixed process. This is a great resource that can provide Certified Scrum Master Training as well as many helpful blogs: http://danube.com/training If there's something more specific that you're after, I'll be happy to lend some additional insight should you want it. Good luck! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=48601 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
