Sooner or later, you have most likely questioned, can the product proprietor and the Scrum Grasp be the identical particular person? Banish that thought!
You would not be the primary particular person to attempt combining the Scrum Grasp function with the product proprietor function. Individuals ask me daily if they’ll mix the roles of product and ScrumMaster and provides each units of duties to a single particular person.
Normally, attempting to fill these two roles with one particular person is a really unhealthy thought. 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 Individuals
Professor Hayagreeva Rao wrote in Harvard Enterprise Overview 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 duty:
- 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 sorts of job.
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 probably 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 get pleasure from). My expertise definitely bears this out. Meaning it’s even more durable to succeed when mixing roles that require totally different abilities.
Pirates solved the issue by having two leaders on every ship: a captain answerable for the star duties and a quartermaster common answerable for the guardian duties.
4 Causes Scrum Masters Ought to Not Additionally Be Product Homeowners
So what does the decidedly non-collaborative, non-agile setting of a pirate ship must do with Scrum? Simply as pirate ships had separate people as captain and quartermaster common, agile tasks ought to have separate Scrum Masters and product homeowners. Let’s take a look at 4 explanation why the product proprietor and Scrum Grasp shouldn’t be the identical particular person.
1. Scrum Masters and Product Homeowners Carry out Completely different Duties
First, the roles of product proprietor and ScrumMaster have very totally different duties (accountabilities), and subsequently require very totally different abilities. Product homeowners carry out the star duties of building a imaginative and prescient for a product, defining one of the 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 bettering 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 considered much like the concept a crew’s programmer and tester ought to be separate. Positive, a superb programmer can take a look at and a superb tester can program. However, separating these roles is normally a good suggestion.
2. Every Function Is a Full-Time Job on Its Personal
Second, it’s fairly probably that being both ScrumMaster or product proprietor requires full- or close to full-time consideration. Placing one particular person in each roles on the identical time will nearly definitely shortchange one of many two.
3. Product Homeowners and Scrum Masters Are inclined to Have Completely different Personalities
Third, there’s some overlap within the abilities and character traits that make good product homeowners and ScrumMasters. Nevertheless, the roles are totally different, and this can be very unlikely that somebody will have the ability to excel at each, particularly on the identical time.
4. A Pure Stress 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, alternatively, are extra attuned to the problems that may come up from a crew below undue strain to ship extra, extra, extra.
When a stability exists between the roles, a product proprietor is free to comply with their pure tendency to ask for extra, secure with the reassurance that the ScrumMaster will forestall pushing too exhausting.
Are There Ever Exceptions?
As with all rule, there are occasions when one particular person can act as a Scrum Grasp and product proprietor on the identical time. I’ve encountered conditions wherein the ScrumMaster and product proprietor had been the identical particular person, and the place I felt that was applicable. A few of these have included small organizations that would not afford the luxurious of devoted or separate people.
Different conditions had been small groups who had began within the pursuit of a technical product proprietor’s imaginative and prescient. On such small groups, anybody character can have an outsized impact on the crew, no matter any formal function performed by the particular person.
Different exceptions have been ScrumMasters concerned in contract improvement. It’s common on such a undertaking for the “true product proprietor” to exist throughout the shopper asking for the software program to be constructed. Sadly, it’s also frequent for such true product homeowners to not wish to be deeply concerned within the undertaking on the degree a Scrum crew wants. It’s in these instances {that a} good ScrumMaster typically steps up and into the function as a proxy for that true product proprietor.
And in a number of particular situations, I’ve seen somebody fill each roles efficiently, towards all odds. Every has been an distinctive particular person, maybe the Blackbeards of Scrum. Nevertheless, in every case, my response was to suppose how a lot better the particular person may have achieved if enabled to work in solely one of many roles.
So, certain there are exceptions—identical to there are to any rule. Nevertheless, 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 function presents. And in addition ought to think about what they would possibly lose in attempting to fill each roles.