Soft Skills in Scrum Teams

Soft Skills in Scrum Teams. A survey of the most valued to have by Product Owners and Scrum Masters.

This is a conference paper written by Gerardo Matturro, Carina Fontán and Florencia Raschetti in 2015.

Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280944813_Soft_Skills_in_Scrum_Teams_A_survey_of_the_most_valued_to_have_by_Product_Owners_and_Scrum_Masters

A magnificent document.

To gather data for this study, they interviewed 25 software engineering practitioners with working experience in Scrum, from 8 software development companies in Uruguay.

They have asked 2 groups of the research question(RQ)

RQ. A: What are the most valued soft skills a Product Owner must have, from the point of view of:

A1: a Product Owner, A2: a Scrum Master, A3: a development team member

RQ: B: What are the most valued soft skills a Scrum Master must have, from the point of view of:

B1: a Product Owner, B2: a Scrum Master, B3: a development team member

What are their recommendations?

To perform the role of Scrum Master, the perspectives of the product owners, scrum masters, and team members interviewed are coincident in that Commitment, responsibility, communication skills, Interpersonal skills, Planning skills, and Teamwork are the most valued soft skills to perform this role.

How do we cultivate these skills? How do we build mastery in these skills?

In my research I have specifically looked into all these aspects and prescribed some of the improvement areas in my book.