World Economic Forum Forsees Growing Demand For Scrum Related Jobs

by The Scum Inc. Team | January 24, 2020 | Blog

Three of nine ‘Emerging Jobs’ in Product Development will be Scrum related. 

These are some of the findings in a new report titled “Jobs of Tomorrow: Mapping Opportunity in the New Economy” jointly compiled by the World Economic Forum and data partners Burning Glass Technologies, Coursera, and LinkedIn. 

You can read the full report here. It begins with this important observation:

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is creating demand for millions of new jobs, with vast new opportunities for fulfilling people’s potential and aspirations. However, in order to turn these opportunities into reality, new sources of data and innovative approaches to understand emerging jobs and skills, as well as to empower effective and coordinated large-scale action are urgently needed across the globe.

“These findings clearly show the incredible and tangible impact Scrum and Agile is having on the world,” says Scrum Inc. CEO JJ Sutherland. “The old ways of working have to change, the key to future growth is innovation, creation and empowerment of both individuals, teams, and most importantly whole organizations.” 

Those needs, specifically in the identified key area of Product Development, will be met by Scrum and Agile professionals.

Three of the nine emerging jobs in this field are Product Owner (#1), Agile Coach (#3), and Scrum Master (#6). 

The report anticipates significant growth in demand for these positions beginning immediately. 

As an innovative feature of this report, the ‘scale of job opportunities’ is measured as the number of job opportunities offered by the professional cluster for every 10,000 job opportunities offered across the global labour market. In other words, we are able to measure the growing prominence of our seven emerging professional clusters relative to the overall labour market. We estimate that, in 2020, the featured professional clusters will represent 506 out of every 10,000 job opportunities—by 2022, this share will have risen to 611 out of every 10,000 job opportunities.

“These findings mirror the growing diversity and demand we’re already seeing in our own transformation and training service,” notes Sutherland. “Though Scrum has its roots in software, it is now becoming common in industries that value innovation and see the need to evolve. This includes healthcare, manufacturing, energy, government services, and more.”