One of the most common
points of stress in a scrum project is when the same individual gets assigned
more than one role in a scrum team. As you may have seen in the article titled “Participants
in Scrum” each role has its own responsibilities and often times the roles
clash with one another. In this article am gonna highlight why I think the
roles of a scrum master and product owner should not be held by the same
individual.
Reason 1: Different
Purpose
The two roles couldn’t be
any more different than they are now. They are both focused on different
aspects of the project. The product owner spends his time thinking about what
the next product increment should be and how to liaise with key business
stakeholders to understand their needs. The scrum master on the other hand is
thinking about how to motivate & help the team to deliver the last
increment that the product owner requested and how he can remove the
impediments in the teams way.
If you are from a
software/IT background, I could add an analogy here between a developer and a
tester. Even though a developer can do testing and a tester can do coding,
there is a reason these two roles were separated. When we test our own code, a
sense of confidence creeps in which hinders the testing effectiveness. Whereas,
when we are testing someone else’s code, our instinctive sense of doubt
prevails and we are able to find much more bugs on the code.
Get the picture?
Reason 2: There is always conflict between the two roles
As scrum master, one of
my regular activities was negotiating with the product owner whenever he/she
feels the team is just not taking the new story they created mid-sprint or one
of the good to have stories for the upcoming sprint. The role of the product
owner is to ask for more and more stories to be included in the sprint while
the scrum master tries to protect the team and make sure that they don’t overcommit
themselves while they continue to deliver good quality software sprint after
sprint.
This means, these two
roles are going to be at cross-hairs frequently and keeping the two roles
separate means either party can do justice to their respective roles.
Reason 3: They are
probably busy with their individual roles already and adding another role will overburden
them
Even though the roles of
a scrum master and product owner may sound simple on paper, trust me, it is a
lot of work and both of those parties (in a typical scrum project) are probably
quite busy doing their respective tasks and adding another role would
overburden them. Even if they manage to burn the midnight oil and try to do
multi-tasking, it will definitely affect their productivity & efficiency
Reason 4: Team and/or Product
suffers
The scrum master is the
guardian or protector for the team and is always protecting them from unwanted
noise & distractions. A scrum master who is also the product owner might be
biased toward adding more & more scope items to the product/sprint backlog
and in the absence of a dedicated guardian the team will be exposed to a
massive backlog which they will be constantly overloaded with. This will result
in reduced velocity (with multiple WIP stories that get spill-over to the next
sprint), reduced quality and more importantly reduced team morale.
On the other hand if the
individual is more scrum master and pushes back on all new requirements, the
product backlog and the organizations product as a whole will suffer while the
team will be quite happy and satisfied.
A good scrum project is
one where we are able to balance between keeping either demands at appropriate
levels and not let one side overpower the other.
Note: It is practically
impossible for the same individual to do 100% justice to both roles
simultaneously. Bias and impact on the team or product is inevitable.
What are your thoughts on
the same individual being both scrum master and product owner? Sound off in the
comments section…
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