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Problematic member of a Development Team. Who would remove him or her?

Last post 04:46 pm February 21, 2024 by Stephan Kristyn
6 replies
05:29 am December 22, 2013

Hi everybody,

One question about Scrum framework.

If a Development Team had a conflicting member, who would remove him or her?

A) Scrum Master, because he has to remove impediments

B) Development Team, because they are self-organized.

C) Product Owner, because he or she is responsible of the ROI of the project.


Thank you in advance.


06:00 pm December 22, 2013

Scrum Master


09:09 am December 27, 2013

definitely B
The Team should have the rights to do so.
The scrum master is not allowed to hire or fire people.


01:03 pm January 6, 2014


Posted By Bengt on 27 Dec 2013 09:09 AM
definitely B
The Team should have the rights to do so.
The scrum master is not allowed to hire or fire people.



According to my understanding of the Guide, first the Scrum Master together with the Dev Team should talk somehow and try to manage the situation. Nonetheless, the dev team must be capable to self organize and therefore, ask for the member's removal of the team.

Someone with a lot of practical experience can confirm or correct us with much more competence =)


01:43 pm January 6, 2014

> first the Scrum Master together with the Dev
> Team should talk somehow and try to
> manage the situation. Nonetheless, the dev
> team must be capable to self organize and
> therefore, ask for the member's removal

I think that's right. From the Scrum Master's perspective the impediment is the conflict, not the person. That's the impediment the SM would try to remove. The Development Team, meanwhile, are self-organizing and that implies an ability to inspect and adapt their own composition.


02:57 pm January 8, 2014

I think this question is very theoretical in nature. We can rule out the PO, which leaves the team or the SM.

Obviously the team can ask for a team member to be removed, but the questions is "who would remove him/her from the team". Asking for it and doing it is not necessarily the same thing.

If the team has mandate to adapt their composition to remove members that also implies that they can also include new members as they see fit. While they're at it why not decide to work only 6hrs/day and have 10 weeks vacation, and free lunches. Again, a very theoretical question.


04:46 pm February 21, 2024

Interesting discussion. On a side note, maybe we can think about a guiding principle of never removing any team member, similar to Simon Sinek notion in his TED Talk "Why good leaders make you feel safe".


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