Scrum Master Is A Fulltime Job

Wayne is a software developer, ScrumMaster and Agile Coach.

  Agile   Scrum   ProjectsAtWork  

There were advantages to being an active software developer functioning as a part-time Scrum Master, but they were outweighed by the conflicts. I’ve come to believe that the Scrum Master role requires a dedicated, full-time person in order to effectively serve as the unbiased glue that holds the team and the Product Owner together.

My professional background is as a software developer, but I have also been a Scrum Master for a few years now. So far I have acted as Scrum Master on three sizeable projects while working for the same organization. On these projects I have been both a Scrum Master and a team member. This dual-role arrangement appeared to work well. The projects were successful and I found that I was able to contribute to the team’s velocity in two different ways: indirectly by performing my duties as a Scrum Master, and directly by completing User Stories.

Until fairly recently this setup seemed to be perfectly natural to me. It never occurred to me that a Scrum Master would be anyone other than a part-time developer. I believed that a developer’s high degree of understanding of the team’s activities meant that they could more effectively facilitate the removal of impediments than a non-developer. Likewise it always seemed logical to me that the developer/Scrum Master should be working on User Stories when not busy with their Scrum Master …

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