YDS: Can One Person be the Scrum Master and Product Owner

This question came from a recent Professional Scrum Master Class that Ryan Ripley and Todd Miller co-taught. The student was concerned that having the same person fill the two roles was not allowed in Scrum.

Of course, the Scrum Guild allows for one person to fulfill many roles, but there are some really good reasons to avoid this anti-pattern. Check out Ryan and Todd's take on this important question in the video. Want to learn more about Scrum?

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[AgileforHumans]

What do you think? Can one person successfully play both roles well? Or do you have a question about Scrum and Agile that you want Ryan and Todd to cover? Leave your answer and questions below in the comments, perhaps your question will end up on a future epidsode!

[vkxcqsn]

Definitely agree these need to be 2 separate roles. I was in an organization where the only developers were given the ScrumMaster role, Systems Engineers were initially given the Product Owner role (the SMEs), and they didn’t know what to do with the Project Managers (responsible for budget and ensuring high level milestones were met). What ended up happening is the ScrumMaster was also working as a developer part time, and they were also doing the Product Owner’s role for 2 projects. The ScrumMaster/Developer would determine which User Stories would get completed if they needed to decide which project’s User Stories would get complete if they were running out of time. The Product Owner and Project Manager would find out after the fact. What ended up happening is it seemed like software took over the projects, and you had very frustrated Systems Engineers and Project Managers. Effectively 30% to 40% of the organization had people that were frustrated with the Agile implementation that the head ScrumMaster(s) put into place. I am no longer there, but I did learn a lot by watching what did/didn’t work, and attempting to provide feedback.

[opmdevil]

I have to say that the only way you can be PO and SM at the same time is that you have no other option. You have so big conflict of interest that it not easy to pull it through. You also have to consider that if you do it longer, you have two branches that you have to specialise and study - the PO and SM path - and then you have to do the actual work for both. I've done PO role on top my SM role and it was for 4 months and I knew that it's gonna be a temp solution but boy it was hard - I had two teams to SM and one to PO and boy I was about to go crazy after 3 months. Was counting days to get rid of the PO role.

[marymiller]

Re-watching again because I am losing some of this knowledge, and I need to re-up. While we aren't doing Scrum in a leadership program, I can say that it is very challenging being the person driving the results while also being accountable for re-designing the process, developing the next generation of leaders, and then clearing the space for folks who are dealing with the major change we all went through. Most of the time, I can (at best) focus on two of these things at a time. When all 4 need to be in play, something gets dropped. While creating teams would be useful, that takes time as well and I don't do that well when there is an influx of "work". It was kind of like being the PO and the Scrum Master at the same time, and I wouldn't recommend it.

[himadridebnath]

"If the PO or SM are actively working on items in the Sprint Backlog, they participate as Developers." But is this good to have one person playing two roles?
Impacts (both good and bad) when SM also playing Dev Role!
Impacts (both good and bad) when PO also playing Dev Role!

[sasukesarutobi]

I remember seeing a film about someone who was both Scrum Master and Product Owner, think it was called "Fight Club".

It didn't go too well that time.

[IanVellosa]

Something which is not mentioned in Scrum is around line management. For organizations following the "Spotify Model", line management is done via chapters which cross multiple teams. Can the chapter lead/line manager hold a Scrum Master or Product Owner role? My personal feeling here is also no, if the PO is asking for a new feature, but he is also a line manager who will be conducting the end of year reviews, it's a lot harder to push back on them.

[charlestawa]

Totally agree with you both ... two roles, two separate people. The situation (one person doing both roles) presented itself where I worked, I advised both management and HR that that was not a good idea and that I did not recommend it, for the reasons you've mentioned ... less than three months later (a few sprints) they gave the SM role to an other person.

[keshavmathur]

This is a simple one. The answer is a big NO.
Well explained, guys!

[osnyzinho]

It would be easier to contract a project manager....dont mix water with oil!