An organization was transitioning from traditional waterfall roles to Agile roles. The organization had Project Managers, Business Analysts, Developers, Development Leads, Quality Assurance, and Release Management.

The organization's thought process was to take a traditional role and move it into the new Agile role. PMs become Scrum Master, and BAs become Product Owners. Easy, right? Maybe not. The transition quickly ran into difficulties and frustrated team members.

Here's a more collaborative and hybrid approach:

Determine the roles you need. Agile has a standard set of roles like Scrum Master and Product Owner. Do you need additional roles? Do you need a Business Analyst to help the Product Owner strategically put together a product roadmap and story map based on market research, benchmarking, and other factors? Does the organization have a strong need for a formal change and release process? Not all Agile teams have the same roles. Some teams have more roles than other teams because of their specific needs (such as compliance, legal, and regulatory.)

Formulate how your Agile teams will cover your development needs. How many teams? What product, service, or process will that team cover? How are they connected to other teams? What roles would the team need? The object is to determine the number of slots available for each role on all the teams.

Give all team members a high-level overview of the Agile roles and how they work. The overview presents the traits and tasks of a good Scrum Master, Product Owner, and other roles in Agile.

Ask team members where they would like to go with their career. Let team members choose multiple lanes.

Look for fit. Talk with team members about their experience and skills in a non-confrontational way. Ask team members about where they see their career headed. Let team members choose multiple roles with the first choice, second choice, and third choice.

Assign team members to open slots of roles. Communicate role assignments and start the process of putting together a transition plan for each team member. How will they move from their current role to the new role?

Train team members on their new Agile role in-depth. Go deep in training on skills and techniques needed to be successful. Provide coaching from a coach that understands your organization's structure and why you have typical and non-typical roles. Avoid coaches that are inflexible and unwilling to adapt to your organization's needs.

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