Sooner or later, you have most likely questioned, 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 function with the product proprietor function. Individuals ask me day by day if they’ll mix the roles of product and ScrumMaster and provides each units of tasks to a single individual.
On the whole, making an attempt to fill these two roles with one individual is a really unhealthy thought. Totally 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: Totally different Expertise Require Totally different Individuals
Professor Hayagreeva Rao wrote in Harvard Enterprise Assessment concerning 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 look after 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 forms of activity.
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 doubtless be bored by the executive trivia of the guardian duties.
To make issues worse, Professor Rao asserts that individuals are inclined to spend most of their effort on the duties they’re good at (and presumably get pleasure from). My expertise actually 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 accountable for the star duties and a quartermaster basic accountable 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 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 explanation why the product proprietor and Scrum Grasp shouldn’t be the identical individual.
1. Scrum Masters and Product Homeowners Carry out Totally different Duties
First, the roles of product proprietor and ScrumMaster have very completely different tasks (accountabilities), and due to this fact 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 may 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 that a crew’s programmer and tester must be separate. Positive, an excellent programmer can take a look at and an excellent 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 doubtless that being both ScrumMaster or product proprietor requires full- or close to full-time consideration. Placing one individual in each roles on the identical time will virtually actually shortchange one of many two.
3. Product Homeowners and Scrum Masters Are inclined to Have Totally different Personalities
Third, there may be some overlap within the abilities and character traits that make good product homeowners and ScrumMasters. Nonetheless, the roles are completely different, and this can be very unlikely that somebody will be capable of excel at each, particularly on the identical time.
4. A Pure Rigidity Exists Between Product Proprietor and Scrum Grasp roles
Lastly, a pure pressure 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 beneath undue strain to ship extra, extra, extra.
When a steadiness exists between the roles, a product proprietor is free to observe their pure tendency to ask for extra, protected with the reassurance that the ScrumMaster will forestall pushing too arduous.
Are There Ever Exceptions?
As with every rule, there are occasions when one individual can act as a Scrum Grasp and product proprietor on the identical time. I’ve encountered conditions by which the ScrumMaster and product proprietor have been the identical individual, and the place I felt that was applicable. 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 character can have an outsized impact on the crew, no matter any formal function performed by the individual.
Different exceptions have been ScrumMasters concerned in contract growth. It’s common on such a challenge for the “true product proprietor” to exist throughout the consumer asking for the software program to be constructed. Sadly, additionally it is frequent for such true product homeowners to not need to be deeply concerned within the challenge on the stage a Scrum crew wants. It’s in these circumstances {that a} good ScrumMaster usually 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, 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 significantly better the individual might have accomplished if enabled to work in solely one of many roles.
So, positive there are exceptions—similar 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 function presents. And likewise ought to contemplate what they would possibly lose in making an attempt to fill each roles.
