Can a Programmer be a Scrum Master?

By Luciano Osorio – Scrum Master at Zappts

Free Translation and Adaptation of the original text published on Business 2 Community, written by Stephanie Ockerman.

People who wonder if a developer can be a Scrum Master are usually already performing two roles. Or they are foreseeing that this is what will happen to them.

The short answer is: Scrum has no rules against performing two or more roles at the same time. It’s up to each person to choose what’s best within the context of their organization and team.

The longer answer involves reflecting on whether: you should and whether you can perform these two roles?

Contextualizing your situation

Often, this situation arises from the desire to select someone from an existing development team to be the Scrum Master. Organizations generally don’t like to “add employees” unless they have very good reasons.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach. However, it is important to look for someone who has the desired skills, characteristics, knowledge, and experience of a good Scrum Master.

To answer whether you should and whether you can, let’s explore the 4 most common challenges of being both Scrum Master and Developer simultaneously.

Challenge 1: Scrum Master Responsibilities

First, let’s clarify the responsibilities.

The development team is responsible for creating at least one functional Product Increment by the end of each Sprint.

The Scrum Master is responsible for ensuring everyone understands and follows Scrum. To do this, they help the team fulfill their roles more efficiently.

“A Scrum Master serves the Product Owner, the Development Team, and the organization. This is a wide range of responsibilities. If a Scrum Master is perceived by the team or the organization as just an ‘event facilitator’ or ‘Scrum enforcer,’ the impact of the role and the benefits of Business Agility are diminished.”

Teaching is more than a simple lesson. Facilitation is more than setting the topic and conducting a meeting. Knowing which approach to adopt and when to best serve a team is very challenging, even for experienced Scrum Masters.

Teams and organizations need to recognize that if this person doesn’t have experience and skills as a Scrum Master, they will need support. Training, for example. This will require time and commitment. And it will also reduce the time spent on product development, which leads us to the second challenge.

Challenge 2: Focusing more on doing the work

Often, there is pressure in the organization to “deliver more.” Additionally, the person’s calling may be more aligned with product development than with team leadership.

When either of these options is true, it will be very challenging for that person to have enough commitment and dedicate more time to improve as a Scrum Master.

Even if the chosen person has a strong passion for the Scrum Master role, everyone else will need to respect that and give that person the time and support they need.

This means the development team will likely need to adapt their way of working to face the next challenge.

Challenge 3: Capacity Planning and Scarce Skills

It’s hard to know exactly how much time is needed to perform the dual role of leader-led. It’s also hard to know exactly how much time is needed to create a complex product that meets the Sprint goal with high quality and integrity.

Both the development team and the Scrum Master are doing complex work!

When a development team member is also the Scrum Master, the rest of the development team will need to be more flexible and less dependent on that individual to build the product. This usually requires a redistribution of knowledge, skills, and development activities, which takes time.

That’s why it’s important to openly discuss each member’s and the team’s needs in Sprint Retrospectives. The same applies to everyday conversations.

Challenge 4: Confusion with Authority, Ownership, and Self-Organization

A Scrum Master who is also a developer needs to respect the shared responsibility and autonomy of development team members.

The Scrum Master is often seen as the “expert” and as a position of authority. But it’s important to remember that a Scrum Master’s authority and knowledge are specifically about the effective use of Scrum as a tool. It’s not about the best way to create a functional increment or about how much work should be done in a Sprint.

In this scenario, a Scrum Master must pay attention to more complex team dynamics.

As a member of the development team, this person is both leader and led at the same time. Therefore, they can opine on how the work is done while being responsible for the quality and integrity of that work. And as a Scrum Master, the person wants the entire Development Team to feel responsible for creating the Increment.

Furthermore, developers must understand that they have the power to decide the best way to do the work. Enabling and increasing self-organization becomes even more challenging.

Conclusion

So, in the end, should you and can you? First, have an open discussion about these listed challenges. Then ask yourself: why do you want a Development Team member to also be the Scrum Master?

There are some motivations, one of them may be resource savings, or it may be that one of the roles isn’t seen as equally important. Both motivations indicate problems to be solved.

If you found other reasons that seem valid, maybe the combination of roles makes sense in your context and is worth trying. Make sure to discuss frequently how it’s working to ensure project performance isn’t compromised.

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