Scrum Master / Line manager
Hi! I'd appreciate any thoughts or comments on this...
Bit of an off-topic question but keen to understand what works and doesn't work in other organisations. In some areas of our business, we have scrum masters who are also line managers to members of their scrum team. I wanted to get your view on this, is it a positive or negative thing? One part of me says positive as that line manager can see the outputs that person delivers, on the other hand, I think negative because that individual doesn't have an outlet or an unbiased person to lean on.
Is there a way this line management role works in your agile organisation?
Thanks!
One part of me says positive as that line manager can see the outputs that person delivers
Why should they care about such things?
I'd suggest that anyone who isn't a Developer ought to care about the outcomes the team delivers. The Developers on that team ought to self-manage their work, with everything that implies about their empowerment. If this principle is applied well, there might not be much of a line left for others to manage at all.
Having Scrum Masters (or any type of coaching or advisory role) also being the line manager of anyone on the team is not a good idea.
A line manager inherently holds legitimate power over those being managed. By holding power, anything that the Scrum Master may say as a suggestion may very well be taken as an order or command. The ability to coach and advise the team becomes more difficult and the team will find it more difficult to self-organize and self-manage around the work to be done.
The "positive" in that the Scrum Master as a line manager can see the outputs of each person also isn't a positive. A Scrum Master doesn't have to care about outputs, for either the team or the individuals on the team. The Scrum Master should be in a position to help the team enable stakeholders to achieve their objectives.
The Scrum framework is dependent on having teams that can self-organize and self-manage themselves. There is no "lead" or "manager" in the framework. The focus of a Scrum Team is not individual output. It is delivery of incremental product value. No one, including those on the Scrum Teams, should care about individual efforts. Measure value delivery not activities.
However, at least in the United States, organizations predominantly want to judge and reward individuals not teams. That is why there are so many levels of management and hierarchies within job titles. As such "line managers" focus on the individuals within a group with the goal of improving the performance of each individual.
The Scrum purist in me wishes that there were no "managers". But the person that needs money to provide for my family understands that they will always be. In fact, my last 3 job titles included the word "Manager" in them.
If the individual that is considered the "manager" understands the essence of the Scrum framework, having them as the Scrum Master is not a bad thing. If they do understand the framework, they should be able to separate themselves from the managerial activities of performance reviews, approving vacation, budgeting, etc when they are fulfilling the Scrum Master responsibilities. I will admit that I do this constantly. I "out on my manager hat" when needed but I am predominantly a Scrum Master where I allow the team to self-organize and self-manage. However, when I am doing the manager job and helping to evaluate an individual's performance I still view it from how their performance has enabled the team's ability to be successful in self-organization, self-management and delivery of product value.
However, I'm probably an exception to the rule. In a large segment of the situations I have seen where a Manager is also trying to be a Scrum Master, the individuals do not have the full appreciation or knowledge of the Scrum framework. Not to be offensive but your comments make me feel that you could be falling into this category. I do not mean that as an insult, I say it purely to point out to you how you are letting the business organizational structure cloud your interpretations.
Look at each situation separately. Since you have obtained your PSM I, approach this with an empirical lense. Don't look for a blanket answer, look for an answer that fits the specific situation best to allow for success.
Hello. I am SM in organisation where Line Manager/Product Owner is in every product team. Before me it was SM/PO/LM in one person and it did not work. Right now it is not perfect but we are working on that(LM/PO in one person). There are a few things that could be implemented:
- daily is only for developers - there is a room for inspect, adapt, selforganistion for the team, not for manager's management
- retrospective is only for developers - there is a room for the team, not for "manager's suggestions", we can invite LM but only for our request
- feedback could be given at Review by manager
- attending to refinment meetings - as an expert not as a manager
SM/LM hybrid could be much more harder to implement. First thing we did is to identify meetings/situation where manager's activity could take away possibility for self-managment/scrum/scrum values etc. In other words identfying situations where manager's activity somehow does not meet scrumguide requirements is the place where I would start.
Being a person with multiple roles(SM/PO/manager) is tempting but very, very, veryyy hard to achieve. Do not treat it as a challange. More like a smart thing not to do.
It is not scrum what we do.... I get that but playing by the book(scrum) is not always an option for organistion policy.
If there is a line Manager in a Scrum team, this is contrary to the Scrum Guide. Everyone in a Scrum team must be self organising, no one reports to anyone in a Scrum team.
Let us look at the definition of a line manager. According to the Cambridge dictionary, a line manager is a person directly in charge of workers, another interpretation is a line manager is the manager to whom teams or individuals directly reports to. Does everyone in the Scrum team reports to this line manager?
If the above is the accountability of the line manager within the context of your organisation then, this is not a Scrum Team as defined in the Scrum Guide. Scrum has rules, it is still very difficult for some organisations not be bend the rule and tailor their structure to suite them while some organisations have not fully adopted Scrum and Agility rather, there are still manifesting the traditional way of vertical management rather than horizontal management as prescribed in a Scrum environment.
In my opinion Alice, you will have to continue to do the needful till the necessary changes are made towards following the specifics of the Scrum Guide. It will be a gradual and achievable process.
Hi Alice.
I had a similar challenge a while back and made the below post:
https://www.scrum.org/forum/scrum-forum/14711/who-should-be-line-manage…
In there is also quite a number of quotes and links to other reference material on this subject which may assist you.
We have no lead but a (true) leader mentioned in the Scrum Guide. So thinking about this topic it dont let me go. Shouldn't a line manager not act more as a leader, is individual bonus not always a bad idea, not just for a scrum master/line manager?
So thinking of an ideal line manager and an ideal scrum master I do see lots of overlappings. So why not having both in one person? Especially for smaller organizations or organizations that does not have a Scrum Master on their pay role (yet), why not start with the line manager as a scrum master (and therefore becoming true leaders)? By this the scrum implementation does have the backing from their line for the whole framework.
Just a thought.
I dunno. Schwaber put in his 2004 Agile Project Management with Scrum that SM is a Scrum project manager, whatever that means. There's a thread on this forum here if you want to read more - https://www.scrum.org/forum/scrum-forum/92525/question-about-canonicity-scrum-theory-scrum-master-managerial-position
My opinion is that it's a highly cultural issue - there are cultures that have god-managers, there are those with more liberal approach to manager <> employee dynamics. I'm not an expert in cultural studies hence only an opinion.
As the old saying goes - my freedom ends where your nose begins.
That's a high abstraction truism, sure, yet organizations are hierarchical entities where higher ups do hold more power over people on lower wrungs and usually (imo) managerial personnel tends to prefer the status quo over shaking the boat unless there's some serious conflict going on, no holds barred, there can only be one winner.
On to quote Highlander - "there can be only one".
Hence I do have a preference for a Scrum Master empowered via line manager's duties (power and responsibility) over one that is not, as people tend to listen to people who pay them, as self-interst comes first and foremost.
You know, people do have mortgages, obligations, plans, hobbies, ambitions, so on. If those are at risk then bye-bye ideals, hello good old down to earth reality.
As one person outside of IT, management, so on, said to me - as I understand, a Scrum Master is a captain that one does not need to listen to, because there is a captain that one needs to listen to. I do not understand this Maciej.
Well, no wonder, as it's a different governance model.
There's this old model by Hackman - here you can find a matrix on that https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-021-09967-3
Of course, as with Scrum theory - so many things are ambiguous and esoteric even.
https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs10664-021-09967-3/MediaObjects/10664_2021_9967_Fig1_HTML.png
Like what are the semantics behind self-managing vs self-governed teams from this model vs Scrum Org Inc Alliance self-managin meaning?
Dunno.
