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Scrum team manager - overstepping role boundaries?

Last post 04:01 pm April 13, 2018 by Ian Mitchell
3 replies
10:44 am April 13, 2018

I am working as a Scrum Master in an org which has quite high dependencies and component teams. We have a new Epic coming up which is being spiked out at the moment to figure out the technical approach. Many of the team are quite new or junior.

The manager of the team (yes, he is the manager of the whole team, he is not my manager though) is working with two of the senior developers on the team and joining in calls with other teams to co-ordinate dependencies. He is also attending the team's Backlog Refinement sessions regularly.

This feels like it will dilute the self-organisation of the team and oversteps the role boundaries. What do you think?


02:15 pm April 13, 2018

From the Scrum perspective, can we just say that the manager is a developer in the development team?


02:48 pm April 13, 2018

Let me start with an observation. The way you put it you do not see yourself as a member of "the whole team". The Scrum Guide disagrees here: "The Scrum Team consists of a Product Owner, the Development Team, and a Scrum Master". So the whole team includes you.

Am I correct in assuming that it is a bigger organisation that is still developing a scrum spirit. In such environments a manager is often still assigned the task to - in a true taylorist way - ensure the naturally lazy employees are performing. In an agile context it is understood that employees love to perform and one would expect the manager to have a role of guide and development consultant for his team members.

The key question in your context would be: does this manager do the activities you mention as an equal development team member or rather to ensure his team is performing. In the latter case I agree that self-organisation is at risk.

If you are in a larger organisation and someone has a role of dependency coordinator then it would probably also be worth looking at scaling options based on the Nexus Guide.


04:01 pm April 13, 2018

It would be reasonable for a Development Team to select a representative, someone who works with other teams and their representatives in resolving dependencies. How true is this in your situation though? Did the team self-organize in such a way that they decided to be represented by this person? It sounds more like sub-roles (manager, senior developer) have been appointed by the organization.


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