97 Things Every Scrum Practitioner Should Know

Chapter 82. Scrum Is “Agile Leadership”

Andreas Schliep & Peter Beck

We would like to briefly explain what Agile Leadership is, why and how Scrum works as a framework for Agile Leadership, and how to put it into practice.

Agile Leadership is the way to lead others to decisions in a fast-changing environment following the values of the Agile Manifesto. Scrum is a framework that helps an organization optimize for more agility and transform the existing culture to align with the Agile values. The founders of Scrum also coauthored the Agile Manifesto.

The Scrum framework defines only the absolute necessary rules and artifacts and the leadership responsibilities of three roles:

• Product Owner is a leadership role through making decisions to maximize the value relative to the investment. The Product Owner serves the Teams and the whole organization by giving them focus through prioritization.

• Scrum Master is a leadership role through improving capabilities of the work system. The Scrum Master globally optimizes the organization and supports the Teams and the Product Owner by making decisions on perfection goals. The Scrum Master’s second focus is to develop the Teams continuously.

• Team member is a (shared) leadership role (with the other Development Team members) through ...