The Scrum framework consists of Scrum Teams and their associated roles; Time-Boxes, Artifacts, and Rules. Every Scrum team has a ScrumMaster responsible for making sure Scrum practices are followed and impediments to progress removed. The ScrumMaster does not manage the team. Teams are self-organizing with no more than 7 members. There is a Product Owner representing the customer to ensure the team addresses priorities from a business perspective. The Product Owner sits with the team. Team members are called “pigs” and everyone else is called “chickens.” The pig and chickens idea originated from a fable. The earliest written version I could dig up is from June 13, 1950 published in the Titusville, Pennsylvania Herald in the column “Try and Stop Me” by Bennett Cerf, pg. 4, col. 4. Cerf said:

A hen and a pig were sauntering down the main street of an Indiana town when they passed a restaurant that advertised “Delicious ham and eggs: 75¢.”

“Sounds like a bargain,” approved the hen. “That owner obviously knows how to run his business.”

“It’s all very well for you to be so pleased about the dish in question,” observed the pig with some resentment. “For you it is all in the day’s work. Let me point out, however, that on my part it represents a genuine sacrifice.”

Schwaber and Southerland¹ use a variation of this fable to illustrate two types of project members. Pigs are totally committed to the project and liable for its outcome. Chickens consult on the project and are informed of its progress. Chickens do not tell pigs what to do. By implication, a rooster is defined as a person who struts around offering uninformed and disobliging views. We all know a few roosters, don’t we?

¹Ken Schwaber and Jeff Southerland formerly presented Scrum as a software development approach at the International conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications 1995