Is the Scrum Master also a developer on your team?

Question

I think that Scrum Master role is not a full time job for most mature scrum teams. A team that is running together for a few month can be fine with a Scrum Master that is also a team member since they know and understand the methodology and most of their concerns/questions were answered.

Even at Jeff Sutherland's company, Patient Keeper, the Scrum Master is also a developer. In addition, Jeff said at a lecture at Google "a good Scrum Master has nothing to do". here is the lecture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht2xcIJrAXo

What is your experience?

Answer 1

Yes, I'm the scrum master and developer on my one man team. :/

Answer 2

My understanding is that Scrum is a way to help developers organize themselves. So yeah, I'd expect the Scrum Master to just be a developer who knows what he's doing and handles the administration of the scrum.

Answer 3

Another way of thinking of the Scrum Master (or Coach in XP terms) is as the equivalent of the technical lead/architect for the project process. I've never seen it be a full time job for a single project. I sometimes see the role played by the project manager, though more often by the dev lead.

Answer 4

I think you could easily get the hats mixed up if you have both the ScrumMaster hat and a developer hat or even an architect hat.

The ScrumMaster's role is purely as a facilitator and should not have any real power over the team or the product they are working on. Perhaps you should consider swapping ScrumMasters with the team down the hall?

Answer 5

My experience says the same. We did have a full time ScrumMaster for a while, covering multiple teams. We soon learned how to self-manage though.

I think it is important to understand what role a ScrumMaster would play, and then ensure that someone on your team is taking care of that role. It could be multiple people doing different things to cover the whole set of roles and responsibilities.

Answer 6

I've seen both sides of this. The best Scrum Master I've worked with hadn't done development in years and was totally committed to reducing the non-development activities of the team. On other teams I've been on the Scrum Master was either actively developing on the project or was working on side work and in both of these cases the development staff took a (small) hit on overhead. We also have full-time Scrum Masters and, for the most part, they aren't part of the time allocation during sprint planning.

Answer 7

The Scrum Master is there to represent the process (coach folks) and remove blockers but this is not a full time job. Therefore they should play another role in the Team (other than the Product Owner.)

The Scrum Master and Product Owner are the only roles which are incompatible because of the different groups they serve. (Team and Client.)

Additionally, if there is a session when the Scrum Master cannot facilitate because they are also a stakeholder (i.e. a rocky-looking retrospective), then another facilitator (ideally a Scrum Master) can be brought in from outside to depersonalise it.

Answer 8

Right now our Scrum Master is the team lead which I think is a rather effective way of organizing things. By being a little higher on the food chain, the Master can keep an eye on what is coming soon for the team I'm on as well as go to bat in cases where other departments are a roadblock. Having only done a couple of sprints, this could evolve a bit more in the coming months.

Answer 9

I don't see any reason why the scrum master can't be a developer on the team, in the same way that a team lead might manage a schedule that includes themself.

You just need to be objective when you put your "scrum master" hat on.

Answer 10

If you're an scrum master you protect your team. If they need a coke to continue, you get them coke. If they need servers, you move the threads to get some computers ready for them. If... If...

While it's not a full time job, is a time consuming job that can be full time some days, and 1 hour others.

Just think that if the scrum master is a developer, in the precise moment a developer finds an impediment, you'll loose 2 developers: the scrum master looking for a solution, and the developer who cannot advance.

And about "team leader". Scrum is supposed to create teams without "leaders inside". The leader is the scrum master by itself. I do understand that there are developers who are like a bible and can help in almost any problem. But this is not a lead role, and this is not a scrum master. It's just Winston Wolfe solving problems.

Answer 11

We are using scrum for 6 months. I am a scrum master of our team and also a lead developer/architect (also implementing code) for the team. I am also CTO of our middle-sized company! And what's more? I am also a shareholder of the company! In these transitioning phase to agile development I am playing a key role here.

Up to the moment, everything goes fine and our team says (and shows) we are doing fine. So, please do not fully depend on the rules which people say everywhere: 'scrum master cannot be a developer, s/he cannot be a shareholder, s/he cannot be a...' whatever. Just, inspect and adapt to your situations. This is what agile means actually.

But one thing: Being a scrum master and also a product owner is not a thing that we have tried and probably we will not try that. Because, these roles really seems contradicts. A few months later I guess, I will be the product owner for our product, and one of the team members would be scrum master.

Answer 12

Initially our team lead was Scrum master.
Then,when all team members gained experience in scrum, it was proposed to do rotation. so SCRUM master changed periodically.
For instance, in current iteration scrum master is s senior developer,next iteration it's other developer,that may be junior.
This rotation consolidated our team well. One of the principle of Agile is crosscompetence - it allows every member of a team to take a role of scrum master.
I know cases,which are successful also, where scrum master was outside person,like consultant,which had strong mediator and communicational skills.

Answer 13

Our Scrummaster is also on the team, but yes it definitely causes confusion when he switches hats to team member.

As a Scrummaster he is not part of how the team solves a problem. His role is to just bring up the issue. But as a team member he has a definite say in how we solve it. It's hard to not cross over when performing one role, and not confuse the roles in the eyes of the team. It can more easily regress into a leadership role especially if it's by a strong personality.

For example, if the team is not looking like it will meet its commitment, the SM should ask, "hmmm not looking good for meeting the commitment. What are you guys going to do about it?" or if the team is not meeting the definition of done for all its items, he might ask "is everything done? how about testing? didn't we decide that was part of 'done'?"

But, as a team member, he could say something like "we're totally screwing up here and need to get our act together!" The team may be inclined to confuse his voice as a member of the team with one of an authoritative manager, and might cause the team (especially new ones) to fall out of self-managing behavior.

But, in our situation it still makes sense to have the SM be on the team. A dedicated SM would be a part-time job for our 1 team.