ScrumMasters Ought to Not Additionally Be Product House owners

In some unspecified time in the future, you have most likely puzzled, can the product proprietor and the Scrum Grasp be the identical individual? Banish that thought!

You would not be the primary individual to strive combining the Scrum Grasp position with the product proprietor position. Folks ask me day by day if they will mix the roles of product and ScrumMaster and provides each units of obligations to a single individual.

Usually, attempting to fill these two roles with one individual is a really dangerous concept. Completely different people ought to fill these two roles. To see why, let’s look again in historical past on the job of being a pirate ship captain.

The Pirates Knew: Completely different Expertise Require Completely different Folks

Professor Hayagreeva Rao wrote in Harvard Enterprise Assessment in regards to the outcomes of asking his MBA college students to design the job of a seventeenth century pirate ship captain. His MBA college students designed a job that lumped collectively two areas of accountability:

• Star duties: These are the strategic work of deciding which ships to assault, commanding the crew throughout battle, negotiating with different captains, and so forth
• Guardian duties: These are the operational work of distributing their pirate booty, settling battle, punishing crew members, and organizing take care of the wounded

The issue with this job description is that it mixes star and guardian duties. As Professor Rao factors out, there are only a few people who excel at each kinds of process.

Star duties require risk-taking and entrepreneurship, whereas guardian duties require conscientiousness and consistency. A pirate captain good at figuring out ships to assault and at main his crew into battle would seemingly be bored by the executive trivia of the guardian duties. 

To make issues worse, Professor Rao asserts that individuals are likely to spend most of their effort on the duties they’re good at (and presumably take pleasure in). My expertise definitely bears this out. Meaning it’s even tougher to succeed when mixing roles that require completely different abilities.

Pirates solved the issue by having two leaders on every ship: a captain liable for the star duties and a quartermaster basic liable for the guardian duties. 

4 Causes Scrum Masters Ought to Not Additionally Be Product House owners

So what does the decidedly non-collaborative, non-agile atmosphere of a pirate ship should do with Scrum? Simply as pirate ships had separate people as captain and quartermaster basic, agile initiatives ought to have separate Scrum Masters and product homeowners. Let’s take a look at 4 the reason why the product proprietor and Scrum Grasp shouldn’t be the identical individual.

1. Scrum Masters and Product House owners Carry out Completely different Duties 

First, the roles of product proprietor and ScrumMaster have very completely different obligations (accountabilities), and subsequently require very completely different abilities. Product homeowners carry out the star duties of creating a imaginative and prescient for a product, defining the very best outcomes the product can create for its customers, and defining the options that can get it there. Scrum Masters carry out the guardian duties of defending a crew from distractions and enhancing collaboration and focus. 

That’s, whereas a product proprietor is figuring out what to construct, the ScrumMaster helps the crew work collectively to allow them to.

In some ways, this may be regarded as just like the concept that a crew’s programmer and tester needs to be separate. Positive, a great programmer can check and a great tester can program. However, separating these roles is often a good suggestion.

2. Every Function Is a Full-Time Job on Its Personal

Second, it’s fairly seemingly that being both ScrumMaster or product proprietor requires full- or close to full-time consideration. Placing one individual in each roles on the similar time will nearly definitely shortchange one of many two.

3. Product House owners and Scrum Masters Are inclined to Have Completely different Personalities

Third, there may be some overlap within the abilities and persona traits that make good product homeowners and ScrumMasters. Nonetheless, the roles are completely different, and this can be very unlikely that somebody will have the ability to excel at each, particularly on the similar time.

4. A Pure Pressure Exists Between Product Proprietor and Scrum Grasp roles

Lastly, a pure stress ought to exist between the product proprietor and Scrum Grasp roles. Though every is undeniably dedicated to the success of the product or system being developed, product homeowners naturally need extra, extra, extra.

ScrumMasters, then again, are extra attuned to the problems that may come up from a crew below undue stress to ship extra, extra, extra.

When a steadiness exists between the roles, a product proprietor is free to comply with their pure tendency to ask for extra, protected with the peace of mind that the ScrumMaster will stop pushing too onerous.

Are There Ever Exceptions?

As with all rule, there are occasions when one individual can act as a Scrum Grasp and product proprietor on the similar time. I’ve encountered conditions through which the ScrumMaster and product proprietor have been the identical individual, and the place I felt that was acceptable. A few of these have included small organizations that might not afford the posh of devoted or separate people.

Different conditions have been small groups who had began within the pursuit of a technical product proprietor’s imaginative and prescient. On such small groups, anyone persona can have an outsized impact on the crew, no matter any formal position performed by the individual.

Different exceptions have been ScrumMasters concerned in contract growth. It is not uncommon on such a undertaking for the “true product proprietor” to exist inside the shopper asking for the software program to be constructed. Sadly, additionally it is widespread for such true product homeowners to not need to be deeply concerned within the undertaking on the degree a Scrum crew wants. It’s in these circumstances {that a} good ScrumMaster usually steps up and into the position as a proxy for that true product proprietor.

And in a couple of particular situations, I’ve seen somebody fill each roles efficiently, in opposition to all odds. Every has been an distinctive individual, maybe the Blackbeards of Scrum. Nonetheless, in every case, my response was to assume how a lot better the individual may have accomplished if enabled to work in solely one of many roles.

So, certain there are exceptions—identical to there are to any rule. Nonetheless, none of these exceptions ought to exist for the long run. And anybody in each roles concurrently ought to pay attention to the challenges the twin position presents. And likewise ought to think about what they would possibly lose in attempting to fill each roles.