Most of the people, including those who have taken part in Scrum courses, misunderstand the basic concepts of Scrum; equality.
It is a big mistake to start applying Scrum without defining the roles accurately and let “everyone gathering around a campfire singing kumbaya”. While freedom, equality, and brotherhood are great ideals for a country, I’m not sure about one of them for agile teams: equality.
People tend to think that self-organization means everyone should be equal including that intern who started yesterday and an architect working for 10 years for the company but this is wrong. In fact, self-organization requires the opposite: there must be differences between the members who are self-organizing. All different roles must be clearly defined by expressing disjunctive responsibility and accountability for each of them.
Differences aka different roles are necessary for self-organization otherwise companies would end up in chaos. So, differences are necessary and diversity is essential. Architects. senior and junior developers work together and the different levels of knowledge should be utilized and respected. I’ll talk about this more in detail in the next post.
Each team member should get the respect he or she deserves. When an experienced team member with a track record of giving solid advice says something will be difficult, others should consider that opinion.
When the new intern we welcomed yesterday shares a similar viewpoint, it’s important for team members to listen attentively, though their opinion should be acknowledged with critical mindset.
Some others interpret equality as if it meant that all team members do the same work – meaning everyone in Agile becomes a generalist and we have no room for specialists. That’s an equality myth.