Is it OK to have more than one role in a SCRUM process [closed]

Question

Do you think it may be OK for a person to have more than one role in a software development company that wants to use SCRUM?

E.g. is it ok/possible if a person is

• SCRUM master and team member
• Product owner and team member
• SCRUM master and product owner

Which combinations do you think are possible? Do you work in such a team? What should be considered if a person has more than one roles?

Thanks for any hints.

Answer 1

All of our scrum-masters are participating team-members and I think that works fine. The process handles differences in productivity really well.

I really think the product owner should be external, but I just believe the teams should have some distance from the product owner.

Answer 2

Product owner shouldn't be a developer or project management role; the whole point is to have someone who can accept a result and who is the subject matter expert. If you make them a team member, you're back to making the product developers define the product; this is a Bad Thing. And if you make them the SCRUM master, first, they probably don't have the development background a SCRUM master needs to understand the issues and estimation, and second, they then control the exact processes and products the SCRUM master should be serving as a balance on.

The SCRUM master can certainly take some team member duties, especially in a small team. However, in most cases as the team size grows beyond 3-4, the SCRUM master won't have a ton of time for regualr development work.

[Updated: "SCUM" master a very inconvenient typo.]

Answer 3

Search the archives of the scrumdiscussion list. This has been extensively discussed in the past on there.