Analysis of the effectiveness of combining the roles of Scrum master and product owner in Scrum-teams

Abstract

Over the past decade, agile approaches, including Scrum, have become increasingly used in other spheres of human activity. Due to the peculiarity in the management structure of IT organizations, namely the possibility of personnel career growth in the models “junior-middle-senior” or “tech-lead-team lead-project manager”, there is a temptation to combine various project roles in the work activity. Leadership positions are often held by people who were very recently technical specialists and, for the most part, did not receive special training as management personnel. The article discusses the issue related to the possibility of combining the functions of the scrum master and the product owner when implementing projects using Agile. The application of the logic of the role model of the manager according to I. Adizes is considered, as well as the correspondence of the roles of the scrum master and the product owner to the elements of the PAEI profile. It is proposed to consider such a characteristic of an effective project team as self-organization from the point of view of group dynamics and the need to distribute roles among team members. The paper puts forward a hypothesis about the need for both managerial training of project team members and the importance of studying soft skills, skills that are associated with the foundations of organizational and social psychology.