Specialisation and agile

This article was originally published here on LinkedIn

The Scrum guide states that it “recognizes no titles for Development Team members other than Developer, regardless of the work being performed by the person”. I have read a number of posts and articles recently that seem to have taken a very narrow reading of this statement and imply (or even claim quite strongly) that specialisation within an agile team is a bad thing. Interestingly, it is often certain specific specialisations that these people seem to dismiss. These include business analysis (or service design), UX design, and sometimes technical architect. It’s notable that I’ve never seen anyone describe software development as being a valueless specialisation. Some of these articles I seem to imply that a goal of the agile coach should be to ensure that every member of the agile team acquires all of the necessary skills to deliver the product. In this agile nirvana they would have not just technical skills but also the soft ones such as eliciting requirements and understanding underlying business drivers.

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