It is encumbent on organisations to identify impacts to organisational structure and roles when introducing Scrum. The roles of Product Owner and Scrum Master should be viewed as new roles and not retro-fitted into existing roles. Such appointments can impacts aspects such as governance, decision rights, reporting and the workforce itself.
It is common for organisations to appoint existing staff members in the roles of Product Owner and Scrum Master for various reasons. While this may be the quickest solution there are issues to be aware of. Staff may:
- Lack the skills or experience
- Lack the desire to perform new roles
- Be inflexible to change, both behaviour and mindset
- Be responsible for multiple roles
- Be appointed Product Owner and Scrum Master for the same team
- Receive insufficient training and coaching to perform the new role
The organisation should take a holistic view to change and not only at the team level.