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

KhDonen picture KhDonen · Jun 8, 2013 · Viewed 7k times · Source

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

Hippias Minor picture Hippias Minor · Jun 9, 2013

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.