Scrum - Are you a chicken or a pig?

Question

As I am just learning about Scrum, it seems to me that for part of an iteration you may be a chicken but then become a pig when it comes time to do your part. Then go back to being a chicken. Is this correct thinking? That your stake in the iteration will change during an iteration? if not how does that work? because when software is built it gets planned,coded, tested, refined, then it is done. I'm a wrong in my thinking? Thanks!

Answer 1

In my opinion you are either a chicken or a pig, it does not change during an iteration / sprint.

If you experiance roles changing like that your sprints are probably too long, or the person was really a chicked the whole time.

Answer 2

You are a pig if your ass is on the line with regard to the project's success or failure.

Answer 3

For the duration of the iteration you're either a pig or chicken - you can't be both. As the team members are the particiapants of the sprint they should always be working on the iteration backlog.

Assuming that by "Iteration" you mean a time period set by the team for producing a potentially shippable product increment (also known as a "sprint").

Answer 4

There's a pig and chicken article here that says in part:

I would consider the roles of both Product Owner and the ScrumMaster to be pigs on a team.

Wikipedia says that Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Team are "pig" roles and Stakeholders (customers, vendors) and Managers are "chicken" roles.

Based on that, I'd say generally you're not changing between pig and chicken.

Answer 5

Unless you are both on the team and a stakeholder in the project, then you are not both.

Pigs are the Scrum team members - product owner, scrum master, developers, testers, and so on.

Chickens are the people who want the product - customers, management.

The only time I can see where a person is both is when the product is for the team. Then, the team are not only the pigs (doing the work, putting it all on the line), but also the customers who want the product.

Answer 6

Based on my experience and understanding of SCRUM your role shouldn't change during a sprint. Either you're a chicken or a pig.

A pig is the one who gets the work done (e.g. a developer), and a chicken is the one who gains something by the pigs doing their work (e.g. the product owner).

EDIT: Just found this "definition" of chicken and pigs: The Classic Story of the Pig and Chicken

Answer 7

In a Team that does Scrum by the book, you can only be a chicken or a pig during a sprint. And probably most Scrum Gurus will tell you that Teams should not change in between Sprints either.

If you are part of the Team, your stake cannot change during the Sprint - because it is the whole Team that is responsible for the piece of potentially shippable code that you commited yourself to produce. If you think in ways like "I am only responsible for the backend part of that feature, which will be built in the first half of the sprint" you are on the wrong track.

However, doing Scrum by the book without thinking about what is right for you may be the wrong decision - you might have some team members who are very valuable but also have other responsibilities (not very good in my opinion).

Answer 8

Thanks all! Very helpful. This sets me strait.

Answer 9

Summary: swapping pig and chicken roles during Sprint can endanger initial contract made prior to it's start, thus endangering successful delivery.

The concept of pig and chicken is just a Scrum’s metaphor for what is otherwise known in project management field as direct and indirect stakeholders of the product development cycle.

The short, memorable and funny story of pig and chicken starting up an eatery makes a great metaphor and helps explaining the stakeholder concept without resorting to management lingo.

One of the great things about Scrum is that it makes current management technology accessible to non-managers. Making it consumer-grade or user-friendly as we would say about software systems.

So can a chicken (indirect stakeholder) turn into pig (direct stakeholder) and vice versa during the development cycle? Can a person be both a chicken and a pig at the same time?

Answering the latter it’s a definite “no”: a person can only be either a chicken or a pig in the context of a single project, whichever stake is greater. The whole chicken and pig division idea is about giving greater decision making power and responsibility during a project stage to the people who are directly involved and intrested in the positive outcome (pigs), limiting interference coming from sometimes powerful external players (chickens).

Can the role change during the project? Yes it can, but not during Sprint. Scrum being Agile development methodology it aims at putting collective responsibility for the outcome on the entire team. Agile (and especially Scrum) promotes “one-for-all and all-for-one” attitude. Not all structured methods do that, for instance one of Waterfall weaknesses is that some team members’ responsibility ends as soon as an interim deliverable is accepted (i.e. functional spec) which shifts the weight of any issues that surface much further into the project onto the shoulders of unfortunate team members who have the responsibility to make project successful during the later development stages (usually developers).

Scum iteration, called Sprint is aimed at delivering a complete change from spec to ready-to-use product, instead of some sort of interim deliverable. The team provides a lot of input into deciding what goes into Sprint and subsequently has to collectively commit itself to delivering the change. That creates a contract between the team and outside world.

Changing the roles during the Sprint can endanger this contract. If a pig becomes a chicken he or she is no longer responsible for seeing the Sprint to completion putting the burden of dealing with any shortcomings in their work onto the shoulders of remaining team members. When a chicken becomes a pig during a Sprint they cannot realistically commit themselves to something that has been agreed before they came on board. Hence it’s best when the roles stay unchanged for the duration of Sprint.

Answer 10

I work primarly with startups, including one of my own. In all cases I act in a role that Lean Development calls "Chief Engineer" or "Product Director". I'm the lead technologist as well as the product manager and the voice of the customer. If you've got someone like this in your organization, then you might not need to departmentalize roles as strictly as Scrum orthodoxy suggests, and you can start to make use of methodological traditions and approaches that don't need to be as locked-down as Scrum often is.