When they ask you to be the ScrumMaster AND the Product Owner...

Agile and Project Management - DrunkenPM Radio

In Scrum, everyone is supposed to have one job. You get to be a ScrumMaster, a Product Owner, or a Development Team member. Each team member of the Scrum Team is supposed to be able to totally focus on the role they play. However, in many organizations, they ask people to play more than one role. You might be SM/PO, SM/Dev, or PO/Dev, or in my case (once upon a time), SM/Project Mgr/BA, and since we had no PO, I got to try and be that too… AND IT SUCKED LIKE A FLEET OF VACUUMS! In every class I teach, there are people who are faced with the daily challenge of playing multiple roles, and more recently I have had a number of students are tasked with being ScrumMaster AND Product Owner at the same time for one team working on one product. I have very strong feelings about this, and realizing that my responses to this situation are maybe not so flexible and not practical for everyone, I reached out on the Agile Uprising Discord channel if there were people who had succeeded in being SM and PO at the same time, AND if they would be willing to join me for a podcast and share some of their experiences around making the SM/PO gig work. This episode of the podcast features Andrew Leff, Chris Murman, and Mike Caddell. Over the course of the interview, we discuss the reasons why trying to be SM and PO at the same time is not advised, ways they found to survive it, and it some cases, actually make it work well. JobHackers: During the podcast Chris shared a link to https://www.thejobhackers.org which is a great place to go if you are looking to get started with getting experience as a ScrumMaster. Agile Uprising: Agile Uprising Discord - https://discord.com/invite/fC96BhD (This is the best way to reach Andrew, Chris and Mike) Agile Uprising Web: http://www.agileuprising.com/ Contact Info: Andrew Leff LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleff/ Chris Murman LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismurman/ Mike Caddell LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikecaddell/