On the other hand, when these roles are combined into a single individual often that individual will gravitate towards the role they are most comfortable with while starving the responsibilities of the other role. This balance enables the team to produce value for their organization but to do so in such a way that ensures the long term creation of that value, such as working at a sustainable pace and keeping the level of technical debt in check. This means that separating these roles between two individuals helps to strike a productive balance.
The Scrum Master, on the other hand, is focused on how to enable the team to deliver the work that the Product Owner chooses most effectively. The Product Owner is focused on the value that the team will produce and how to select the work that will ultimately enable that value. While the roles may at first appear similar, in actuality they have very different focuses. In fact, that’s where the similarities end. So similar, in fact, that one might believe that there may even be efficiencies to be gained by doing so.īut, if we look closer, many of these similarities only appear because these two roles are the only roles on a Scrum team which are not developer roles. After all, at first glance, the roles actually appear very similar. In fact, it might even sound as if it makes sense. If you’ve been around new Scrum teams for any period of time then you’ve likely heard this question more than once. “Can’t we just combine the Scrum Master and Product Owner roles?”