#151 – Awareness of Empowerment

Even though there is no official mention of Line Managers in the Scrum Guide, they are often vital for organizations transitioning from a traditional waterfall way of working to an agile one. One of the first accountabilities that Line Managers (should) pass on is the product one to the POs. This is a fairly easily identifiable and outlinable accountability and, if the willingness to empower the POs is there, a pretty straightforward task.

The people and team development accountability, on the other hand, is much harder to really define, split up and pass on to an empowered Scrum Master. Here, the Scrum Master’s competencies, experience and wishes of professional growth should drive the level of ‘people accountability’ given to them in a close dialogue with the Line Manager, whose task would then be to make it possible for Scrum Masters to generally take up this accountability in the given organization.