Alright, now that I have talked about the roles in a Scrum team, I can now explain in details each roles so that you might better understand what are their roles and their responsibilities.  First of all the ScrumMaster has the duty to teach and educate the team about what Scrum is all about.  He or she has to make sure every member of the group follows the practices and guidelines made for their specific project.  This means one Scrum Team might have different deadlines and prerequisites than another Scrum Team.  However, there are some basic steps that will be exactly the same for any team.  The ScrumMaster must ease the problems solving.  When a team starts to use the Scrum method, they should strictly follow the Scrum rules because it takes some time to get used to this new method and you wouldn't want to have incoherent rules at the beginning.  On the other hand, as the team progress the rules and practices will gradually change as they see fit.  The ScrumMaster must remind the team that each sprint is important for the final goal.  Every problem that gets in the way of the progress of the project is called an impediments.  It might take many forms such as bugs, long meetings, distractions, waiting for someone and many more.  It is the ScrumMaster's function to make sure that the impediments are seen and are properly addressed so they will stop hindering the progress.  This person will also certify that the team knows how well they are performing in achieving their goal. Also the ScrumMaster will facilitate the meetings by making sure all the team is prepared by preparing the space and making sure the meeting does not goes over the time limit. Furthermore,  it is his job to ease the dialogue between the stakeholders who speak about Return on Investment, forecasting, budget and profit and the teams that talk about art, visions, gameplay and innovative features. The job of a ScrumMaster can be hard and complicated.  Clinton Keith says "A ScrumMaster’s role on the team is compared to a sheepdog. They guide the team toward the goal by enforcing boundaries, chasing off predators, and giving the occasional bark. The role of a ScrumMaster requires a proper attitude. An overbearing sheepdog stresses out the flock. A passive sheepdog lets the predators in among them."  I think this explains a bit more what is the role of the ScrumMaster.

I know I talked about a sprint before and I did not explain what it was all about.  Basically, a sprint is a selected number of features from the product backlog, we could say they are like small projects inside the Project.  So let's say a game needs to incorporate a Dashing move. A sprint would be the approximate time for each member of the team( Animators, programmers and designers) to create this feature.  Normally a sprint has to take from 1 to 4 weeks no more no less.  There are different benefits and disadvantages for a short sprint (1-2 weeks) and a long sprint (3-4 weeks).  It really depends on the team and their ability to work.  For a new team it is really better to start short sprints because as Mark Levison says: "Since the team has more but shorter retrospectives they have more opportunities to try smaller changes. This also provides more opportunities to learn." 

 

Now let's focus on the Product Owner. In a nutshell a product owner will establish and communicate a vision for the game, prioritize the features in the game.  He is responsible for the Return on Investments (ROI).  This means that the investments put into the game has to return with a profit.  This means he has to identify the market demands and what could be a hit.  This has to be done even years in advance of the release.  He has to make forecast for different aspects such as the game rankings, the profits or loss they made.  The product owner builds a link between the different departments of marketing, sales and the Scrum Team by explaining and indicating the emerging trends in the gaming industry.  He also has to create a vision that is approved by a consensus.  It is the of the utmost importance for this person that the vision is understood and agreed for the success of the game.  Consequently, if the vision is not properly explained the different teams will wander in separate directions and this will result in a game that has several great ideas that do not work together.  It is really not uncommon to see this, with some releases.  For example, I could think of several games that had a horrible gameplay but such a beautiful art and so on.  He has more responsibilities but I would have to say this is one of the most important one for this Role. 

Then there is the Stakeholders. They are basically the people outside the team that have a say in the game that is being made.  There are some common roles for the Stakeholders such as the producers, the marketing department and the Studio.  Each of them can ask for a feature requests that need to be implemented in the product backlog.

So I would say this is a great description of what the roles are in Scrum but if you want to read a bit more about it then I would suggest

Schwaber, K. 2004. Agile Project Management with Scrum. Redmond, WA:

Microsoft Press.

because it gives a great background knowledge to better understand Agile project management with Scrum.