Different meaning of stakeholders in Scrum. Is a dev team a stakeholder? [closed]

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Generally, I have learned that stakeholders (in general) are parties interested in the project - development team, testing team, QA team, management, customer (of course) etc. But now in Scrum, it says that the stakeholders are the ones who validate the product and the product is done for them, based on their needs. That would imply it means just the customer. Is it right or I misunderstood, is a development team really a stakeholder?

http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/21-contracts-for-implementing-scrum

Stakeholders are parties with an interest in the product being developed and/or the Scrum process. They might include suppliers, customers, the business owner, subject matter experts, or product support.

http://thescrumblog.blogspot.cz/2011/04/stakeholders-and-feedback-in-scrum.html

The Scrum Team:
A lot of people forget that the Scrum team is a major stakeholder for the project

Answer 1

Well,

Tecnically Scrum Development Team is part of stakeholders : like Product Owner or the guy(s) who pay(s) for the project.[ the boss, investors etc]

But the Real Criteria For identifying a StakeHolder is: [ with the danger of over simplification of "happy" and "sad" terms ]

If the project is not succedded who will be "hurt"? Or if project is succedded, who will be "happy"?

So even end users are stakeholders. :-)

And if investors really does not care success of project [ can such investors exist? well humans are irrational and yes they may exist because of some politics], they are just "stakeholders" on paper not in real.

Answer 2

Frankly I believe you to be misunderstood as you have mangled multiple Scrum roles into your definition of a "stakeholder".

The classic definition of Stakeholders is that they are people with legitimate interests in the project. Stakeholders are NOT always product owners and they should not be confused with a Product Owners role in Scrum.

The product owner, helps define the backlog of the scrum team, sets priorities of units of work and communicates progress to "stake holders". These units of work are first "validated" with the Product Owner, and usually again in a sprint ending demo / wrap up of the iterations work to "stakeholders".

Customers or users are who your're building software for. They can also be considered "stakeholders" however I would not do so. I personally like to keep a clear line drawn between stakeholders of the project "support / sales / business executives / etc" and "customers / users".

If your just getting into Scrum i would highly recommend the following book:

• http://www.amazon.ca/User-Stories-Applied-Software-Development/dp/0321205685

Answer 3

The definitive guide to Scrum is the Scrum Study Guide. It does not define stakeholders, even though it does use the term stakeholders 4 times in the document.

Scrum Study Guide - http://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/Documents/Scrum%20Guides/Scrum_Guide.pdf

Generally however, a stakeholder is anyone with an interest in the project. This can include investors/board, management, end users, development and anyone else who is either funding, using or building the product.