The Product Master

Thank you Ayleen from Melbourne for your #minutewithmarcus question today. “So Marcus can the scrum master and product owner be the same person?” If you’ve have been on a training course with me you’ll know I’m a big believer in contextualising agile to your circumstances. One of my few exceptions is this one! In any good agile team you need someone who acts as the voice of the customer aka the product owner. equally you need someone who acts as the voice of delivery aka the scrum master. if you’re lucky enough to have the voice of technology I.e. an architect or tech lead then you’re in a great place. however problems arise when we start blending that voice of delivery and customer. I have two experiences where I’ve seen it done well, the first is in personal agility you have to wear both hats in most circumstances as it’s your life and backlog. the second brings me closer to my former life in project management, your essentially having someone making customer decisions and directing delivery. Bringing this back to your question Ayleen maybe your organisation doesn’t call out the scrum master and product owner roles explicitly, that’s ok you don’t have to create a new job title, just recognise these are skills and capabilities you need to develop and I’ve seen great teams use a cycling system for developing scrum master skills. if you’d like to find out more about what it takes to be a good product owner join us on one of our upcoming courses.