As we have been putting SCRUM into the organization, it has me thinking about how to help the teams understand roles and responsibilities in the new SCRUM formation. We use RACI (defined below) internally to help dictate everyone’s understanding of who makes which decisions and why.
One of the best articles on the subjects of RACI for SCRUM, titled The RACI+F Matrix, comes from Christophe Le Coent. I especially like and have adopted the facilitator role which really describes many of the duties of the Scrum master very well.
This gives us the following RACI definitions.
R – Responsible – These are the people who are responsible for doing the work
A – Accountable – This is the person responsible for the outcome and decision maker
C – Consultant – These people contribute to a decision being made (their input may or may not be agreed to)
I – Informed – These people are informed about a decision but do not get input
F – Facilitator – These people help facilitate communication and information across the team.
We have drafted the below matrix which we continue to add to as necessary to resolve clarity for our organization.
| RACI Matrix | Team Member | Product Owner | SCRUM Master | Functional Manager | Architect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ensure consistency of SCRUM practices |
C | C | R | A | I |
| Text | |||||
| Provide Vision, Goals and Context for the product |
I | R/A | I | I | C |
| Text | |||||
| Provide resources with right skills and mindset |
C | I | I | R/A | C |
| Text | |||||
| Prioritize and manage the backlog |
C | R/A | C | I | C |
| Text | |||||
| Remove Impediments | R | C | F | R/A | R |
| Text | |||||
| Make sure SCRUM practices are used |
R | C | F/A | C | C |
| Text | |||||
| Create, Apply and improve Definition of Done |
R | C | F | C | C |
| Text | |||||
| Create, Apply and improve Definition of Ready |
R | C | F | C | C |
| Text | |||||
| Define Acceptance Criteria | C | R/A | F | C | C |
| Text | |||||
| Write/Perform Acceptance Tests | R | A | F | I | C |
| Text | |||||
| Ensure Quality of the Product | R | A | F | C | C |
| Text | |||||
| Manage Risks | C | R/A | F | I | C |
| Text | |||||
| Approve User Stories (Stories meet definition of done) |
C | R/A | F | C | C |
| Text | |||||
| Define Coding Patterns | R | I | I | C | R/A |
| Text | |||||
| Define component and module interactions |
R | I | I | C | R/A |
| Text | |||||
| Define Problem Approach | R | C | F | C | R/A |
| Text | |||||
| Creating Ready User Stories | C | R/A | F | I | C |
| Text | |||||
| Sprint Planning and Task Breakdown |
R/A | C | F | F | C |
| Text | |||||
| Daily Scrum Meeting | R/A | I | F | F | I |
| Text | |||||
| Sprint Demo | R | A | F | I | I |
| Text | |||||
| Sprint Retrospective | R/A | R | F | I | I |
We continue to rollout SCRUM in our teams and have found that clarifying roles and responsibilities has helped everyone understand where they have input and what they are responsible for.
Mike Adler
VP, Engineering
Hi Mike,
Thanks for this nice article. We figured out that standup meetings are great but needed improvement (they took a lot of time and de-focused our colleagues). Because of this we developed a SaaS tool to “automate” the daily standup meetings – with just a single email. If you like to take a look: http://www.30secondsmail.com.
Best,
Ajie