Is it OK to have more than one role in a SCRUM process [closed]

Question

Do you think it may be OK for a person to have more than one role in a software development company that wants to use SCRUM?

E.g. is it ok/possible if a person is

• SCRUM master and team member
• Product owner and team member
• SCRUM master and product owner

Which combinations do you think are possible? Do you work in such a team? What should be considered if a person has more than one roles?

Thanks for any hints.

Answer 1

Thanks for all your answers. I can't select one of them as the accepted answers, because all are valuable. I'm therefore accepting this answer to remove the reminder from my profile page.

Answer 2

All of our scrum-masters are participating team-members and I think that works fine. The process handles differences in productivity really well.

I really think the product owner should be external, but I just believe the teams should have some distance from the product owner.

Answer 3

Product owner shouldn't be a developer or project management role; the whole point is to have someone who can accept a result and who is the subject matter expert. If you make them a team member, you're back to making the product developers define the product; this is a Bad Thing. And if you make them the SCRUM master, first, they probably don't have the development background a SCRUM master needs to understand the issues and estimation, and second, they then control the exact processes and products the SCRUM master should be serving as a balance on.

The SCRUM master can certainly take some team member duties, especially in a small team. However, in most cases as the team size grows beyond 3-4, the SCRUM master won't have a ton of time for regualr development work.

[Updated: "SCUM" master a very inconvenient typo.]

Answer 4

Search the archives of the scrumdiscussion list. This has been extensively discussed in the past on there.

Answer 5

Our SCRUM master and product owner are the same person, but he's a unique individual who knowns when he's wearing his SCRUM master hat (or Karate Kid headband in this case) he is not the product owner and visa versa.

Oh yeah, and I definitely recommend a Karate Kid headband for the SCRUM master.

Answer 6

In an "ideal Scrum situation" you wouldn't be sharing roles.

Scrum master and team member
On occasion there would be a conflict of interest between them needing to complete their task and needing to remove an impediment that a team member has reported. In each of their roles they have 'committed' to completing their role before the sprint ends - which should take precedence? However, in reality this is probably the most common pairing of roles

Product owner and team member
You really should never have the same person accepting work as complete and finished and actually doing the work. This should only ever happen in a one man company in which case you may question the idea of using Scrum in the first place

Scrum master and product owner
Again I see a potential conflict of interest between the Scrum master wanting to complete the sprint as has been committed to and the product owners need to accept say the sprint has been accepted.

Answer 7

Scrum intentionally splits up the traditional project management responsibilities to guard against the traditional project management pitfalls, including pressure and micromanagement. By definition, the Scrum Master has no authority and the Product Owner has authority, so if we combine those two into one person we should just be honest and call that person a regular project manager (perhaps with some Agile skills).

The other combinations (PO is a team member, SM is a team member) also have downsides but are less harmful.