Scrum Roles and Accountabilities
Three accountabilities, five events, three artifacts
Scrum defines exactly three accountabilities inside one Scrum Team: Product Owner, Scrum Master and Developers.
Product Owner - accountable for maximizing the value of the product. A single person, not a committee; the PO may delegate work but never accountability. The PO develops and communicates the Product Goal, orders the Product Backlog, and ensures it is transparent, visible and understood.
Scrum Master - accountable for the Scrum Team's effectiveness. A true leader who serves: coaching self-management and cross-functionality, causing impediments to be removed, ensuring the events are positive, productive and within timebox, and helping the wider organization understand Scrum. The SM has no authority to make product decisions and is not a people manager.
Developers - the people committed to creating any aspect of a usable Increment each Sprint. They are self-managing (deciding who does what, when and how) and cross-functional, own the Definition of Done, estimate, and hold each other accountable.
Traps
- Casting the Scrum Master as team lead, project manager or administrator - the SM has accountability for effectiveness, not for delivery.
- Making the PO a committee, or a proxy who cannot actually order the backlog.
- Reading "Developers" as "programmers only" - testers, designers and analysts are Developers too.
- Assuming the SM owns product value or the team's results.
Rule of thumb
PO owns what and why; Developers own how and how much; SM owns how well the team works together. If a scenario asks "who is accountable?", map it to these three verbs.