Hey @hesh_fekry, I had a difficult question recently during an interview for a job in a software development company. It was about the composition of a Scrum Team - what are the roles, who’s responsible for what, etc. While I knew the answers as I have experience in the IT industry, it was the first time somebody asked me this kind of question during the recruitment process!
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Thanks @Dom_Larch . Great question.
This one I can help you out myself. I recently shared this with our team internally to help define the roles internally.
I found these graphics very helpful for explaining this.
One very important note: This can differ in each organization depending on the resources and set up they have. SCRUM is designed to have some flexibility so it can work for different contexts. Whilst its good to have clearly defined roles, there maybe some situations you need to adjust slightly to make it work for your orginization.
I am curious how you dealt with that question in the interview and if there was any follow up questions?
I would’ve been tempted to answer with:
- Devil’s advocate: Has to argue with everyone, whether they know the topic or not.
- Zoomie: Wants to cut every estimate in half. Everything will go perfectly. And fast!
- Eeyore: Sees every possible issue that might occur. Some of them involve meteors. You don’t work in space.
- Legacy: Liked waterfall methodology, darn it all to heck.
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Thanks for sharing that @hesh_fekry. The question wasn’t only about general Scrum principles and Product Owner & Scrum Master roles. The interviewer asked me also about specific roles in the dev team, meaning:
- differences between Frontend and Backend Devs and differences between junior/mid/senior roles
- the role of the Architect
- the role of the Business Analyst
- the role of the QA
On top of that, there can also be an Agile PM but it’s optional and the scope is limited in comparison to a “traditional” PM.
All in all, it went pretty well for me, I believe 
After this question, we moved forward to standard HR questions.
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Can i ask what the position you where applying for was?
Head of Marketing in an IT company providing custom software development and outsourcing services.
Hi @Dom_Larch Scrum teams typically have 3 roles, The Scrum Master, Product Owner , and Development Team. The Scrum Master is primarily responsible for facilitating the Scrum Team, removing impediments/ blocker and ensuring that the scrum guidelines are adhered to. The Product Owner is primarily responsible for Product/ value prioritization and is also the major liaison between the Team and Business/ Stakeholders. The The Development team doesn’t necessarily mean Software Developers but every one involved in delivering an item of value within an iteration. Typical composition of a development team could include, Software Engineers, Architects, Business Analyst, UI/UX Designers, Testers etc.
Hope this helps.
Devil’s advocate : Has to argue with everyone, whether they know the topic or not
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Head of Marketing? And they wanted to make sure you understood their dev methodology in depth? Hmmm. I guess I can see the logic there – if you’re marketing to CTOs and the like, you need to understand the setup and the language in depth so you can ensure all marketing material is targeted correctly and uses the right jargon.
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Yup, I guess that was the intention @naomi_kramer
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