On this week’s Agile Uprising Podcast, Andrew, Ryan, Troy and Jay discussed filling the scrum master role with a fully dedicated person vs. having a team member play the role on a part time basis. Some interesting questions resulted from the conversations; Is it best for the Scrum Master to have served in apeople or project management role in the past? Does one person have enough time to fulfill both roles? Can developers or analyst successfully transition into the role? The simple answer to all these questions is “it depends,” but I am interested in hearing about people’s experiences and what worked given the context.
Scrum Master Podcast Follow-up: Dedicated Scrum Master vs.Team Member/Scrum Master
sjoerdly
#2
Hi Michael & community!
Having had the experience with both situations, I can definitely say that my personal preference is full on Scrum Master.
Why? Because I’ve noticed that scrum master impact is highest when he/she can work in a mostly ad hoc fashion, influencing, facilitating and coaching at any point in time they see an opportunity, and at any place in the organization. When you also have a partial team commitment where you need to plan work (even on a daily plan) it is hard to give commitment on picking up items and contributing to the goal(s). So in the end of that part time stint I was more of a flying keep tying up loose ends, doing code reviews, etc. But not able to really finish stuff of my own. This was bad for my motivation as I did not feel like a fully contributing member, and led to bad patterns like becoming the goto guy for advice, reviews and random stuff to research which impaired the self-organizing nature of the rest of the team. Furthermore, my scrum master side of the equation was also struggling and not having the full focus and freedom to manage the scrum framework fully (coaching organization & PO in addition to the team). So when the opportunity presented itself to create a full time focus on scrum master duties, I jumped on it and never looked back!
I hope my story helps someone out there 
If you want to know more don’t hesitate to ask!
metlucero
#4
Hi All
I have experiences working with both approaches because of my personal experience I prefer to work with a full Scrum Master. Why? Because many times I run into with testers worried to finish their job and don’t care about organising the Retrospective or Planing. It means, in that moment this guy was a tester and SM at the same time.
Once I asked to a developer/ SM how is things going in the Sprint. He responded to me that he hadn’t any idea because he was very concerned about fixing a bug in production.
To sum it up, each team member has a first thing in mind to work on his user story so if you add an extra duty even for one Sprint it would be useless.
If someone want to discuss over this topic over Skype (metlucero is my id) I feel very happy.
Regards,
Mario
mccallam2
#5
@metlucero, thanks for your response and great to have you in our community. Your choice of words “in that moment” resonates. I feel like anyone playing the role of a SM has to be a SM in every moment. If not, I feel the intent of the role is sacrificed.
metlucero
#6
I feel happy that you like my answer.
If you want to chat over Skype (metlucero is my id) about Scrum I feel happy to do it.
Kind Regards,
Mario