Accountability vs Responsibility
There is a difference in meaning between these words. They convey different levels of responsibility. To cut a long story short, if you’re “accountable” for something, it means you’re responsible for the effects of the work that you either do by yourself or delegate it to someone else. If you’re responsible, you’re doing a task to complete it. To learn more details about the distinction, you can read this post. Bearing in mind what these two words mean, we can look into Scrum accountabilities and responsibilities.
Scrum accountabilities
There are three Scrum accountabilties that make up a Scrum Team: the Product Owner, the developers and the Scrum Master. The entire Scrum Team is accountable for creating a valuable, useful Increment every Sprint. Each role is answerable (accountable) for providing working valuable product. In other words, they are responsible for the effect. What is expected of them is frequent deliver valuable software delivery to the client.
The developers’ accountabilities
The developers are the people who create an Increment of value: ‘Done’ working product each Sprint. They’re always accountable for:
Notice that they’re always accountable for how they will do a piece of work selected and ordered by the Product Owner.
The Product Owner’s accountabilities
The biggest accountability of theirs is to maximize product value that the Scrum Team creates. Their accountabilities include Product Backlog management including:
Although the Product Owner can delegate someone else to do the things above, they’re still accountable, meaning they will face off possible consequences.
The Scrum Master’s accountabilities
They’re accountable for
The first point seems easy to do, but it isn’t. It’s very difficult and time-consuming. This is done by coaching team members. A Scrum Master helps (=supports) their developers, the Product Owner. A common anti-pattern is that the Scrum Master replaces everybody in doing everything. That might kill the idea of a self-organizing team. The Scrum Master helps the team. This helping is reflected by:
In relation to the Product Owner:
And towards the organization:
The responsibility process by Avery
Christopher Avery wrote a fantastic book entitled The Responsibility Process. In his book he lays out the differences between being responsible and taking responsibility. Also, he makes a clear distinction between being “responsible” and “accountable”.
Responsibility forming
According to Mr Avery, responsibility forming is not only a process, but also a model. The process divides into six stages. One might transition from one phase to another. It’s not a management tool, Avery says. “It’s a self-leadership tool,” he maintains. Let us take a look at in more detail. We will start from the very bottom.
Denial: “Nothing bad happened.”
When something goes wrong, people pretty often start to deny there’s something wrong. Some somehow don’t acknowledge it. Avery says it’s a defence mechanism of our mind. We’re afraid to face a problem, that’s why we don’t want to either be responsible or take responsibility. The problem is left unresolved.
Lay blame: “It’s them!”
We finally realized the facts, hence we managed to acknolwedge we had a problem. The problem is we start to find a scapegoat. We’re a blamethrower. As a consequence, we move the responsibility to someone else.
Justify: “I couldn’t do it because …”
We move on the next level, so making excuses begin. Being excused is something we expect. We say it’s not about us, it’s about the conditions, the circumstances or whatever.
Shame: “Gosh! How could I forget to do it?!”
At this level, we feel responsible, given that the feeling of embarrassment of not seeing to something we should have done.
Obligation: “I must fix it.”
We feel very responsible to complete or fix the work. We start taking some measure. In other words, we start taking the responsibility to fix the problem.
Responsibility: “I do it.”
Over here, you take the responsibility from the very start. What you want to do is fix the issue, no matter it was you or someone else who blew it. You don’t care who is to blame or how I feel. You just take the necessary steps to resolve the issue.
Summary
To take everything into consideration, one might start with any responsibility level. Organizational culture, upbringing, work on ourselves are all important factors in creating the sense of responsibility.
