8.2: What You Can Do, Starting Tomorrow - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems

<v ->Now, let's talk about your own journey to agility.</v> No matter what your role in the organization currently is, you can start introducing agility into the work that you and others do every day. However, your agility to drive change in the areas where you initiate the change will differ depending on your current role. In this lesson, I'm going to provide an overview of the agile professions and related certifications. From identifying relevant career path to getting a job and then advancing in your career. There are two primary tracks, agile project and agile product management. The structure and organizational hierarchy are presented in this slide. The titles presented in this table differ for each organization. Standards are still being established. This is one of the reasons why you need a comprehensive job description when making a choice of which agile position to apply for. Many companies do not distinguish between the level of experience and seniority for scrum masters. So, this role can be quite junior or very senior for different employers. Job description including the number of required years of experience is a good indication of the seniority of the role. In some companies, additional mechanisms are used to convey this information such as levels, for example. You could have Scrum Master 1, Scrum Master 2, Scrum Master 3 as the most senior Scrum Master role. So what are the standard expectations for the Scrum Master? According to the Scrum guide, the Scrum Master is accountable for establishing Scrum as defined in the Scrum guide. They do this by helping everyone understand Scrum Theory in practice both within the Scrum team and the organization. The Scrum Master is accountable for the Scrum team's effectiveness. They do this by enabling the Scrum teams to improve the practices within the Scrum framework. Scrum Masters are true leaders who serve the Scrum team and the larger organization. So here on the screen, you can see a standard Scrum Master job description. Again, look at the number of years and the details to decide whether this is the right role for you to apply for. Now let's look at the product owner job definition. Product owner is responsible for the product side of your organization. You have to be excited about delighting your customers, defining the scope and launching new products. Product owner is responsible for the "what" as opposed for the "how" to deliver the product. If you are interested in becoming a product owner, make sure that you look at the details of the job description. How many years are required? What are the product types and the scale that is required to deliver? Product owner is adjacent to the product manager role. Product manager is working above the software development life cycle. Product managers usually work closely with marketing and sales in rolling out the product to customers. Sometimes, product owners report to a product manager. Product manager is a very popular title and becoming more and more popular. It's considered as Silicon Valley type of job where all the decision making and delivery of the new product, whether you work for a startup or a large organization is in the hands of the product manager. So again, product owner and product manager are adjacent professions but sometimes they're used interchangeably. From our perspective product owner is well defined by Scrum guide as the role of working with the Agile team in delivering software or product increments that delight the customer. Usually, you have to look very well. You see this role that you see here is very detailed. It took me two slides to put it here and read the product owner job description to make sure that you're an empowered product owner, not the one who just writes backlogs and user stories. The one who can make prioritization decisions, delivery decisions, and lead the team in delighting their customers.