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Scrum Master as a team member

published August 3, 2010

In small teams it is common for Scrum Master to work as a team member and work with code by developing new features. Does it work? Well, it depends, but it can easily lead to problematic situations. I feel that one person can work as a Scrum Master for max. 7-9 people and these people can be divided into multiple teams or work in a same team (although 9 team members might be too much).  When there is not enough work for Scrum Master and he also works with new features, there is a possibility that:

• He will concentrate too much on code and neglect real Scrum Master work
• Dual role will hinder team self-management
• Scrum Master can become a bottleneck if he is working with architecturally key components
• Dual role can cause role conflict

Unfortunately, having non-coding Scrum Master is not always possible but if you can, you should try to fully utilize Scrum Master, so that he works with multiple small teams simultaneously.

However there are clear benefits if Scrum Master is very familiar with used technology, knows codebase, and understands architecture. This way he can coach younger developers and help team to avoid pitfalls.

Samuli @ 21:30 (One Comment)

tags: Scrum, Social psychology

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