The Blue Jays released (fired) one of their pitchers yesterday. While discussing it on the radio yesterday, Jeff Blair said the following.

In baseball the bullpen is their own little island. They’re removed from the team while the game goes on. There are a lot of personalities and issues that can go on. Everyone has roles and responsibilities and every successful bullpen needs what amounts to a sheriff or a marshall. To kinda keep track of guys; to tap them on the shoulder and say ‘you better start to loosen up’ based on how the game was going.

That’s an interesting dynamic that I hadn’t thought about before. I suspect the same also applies to product development.

A major league baseball team typically has two major components; baseball operations and everything else. In software, we have the development team (which I include coders, testers and even support in that mix) and everything else (marketing, hr, sales, etc.). Let’s look a little smaller. Your product / feature / release team (self-organized or otherwise) is your own version of a bullpen. You sit together (physically or virtually), you all have roles and responsibilities and you likely have someone who is the ‘lead’.

I put that in quotes because it could have many meanings. It could be be that they have been officially designated as the lead. But it could also that they have assumed the mantle just by their actions.

The ‘tapping of shoulders’ I think is a big part of being in a lead role. Part of what is expected of people in lead roles is to bring their experiences into the mix. “We should do X, because I have seen Y and Z before.”

I’m not sure I like the usage of ‘sheriff’ or ‘marshall’ in this context, but I don’t really like the term ‘scrum master’ either.