The Scrum Master accountability can be shared#7

In the SG 2020, the Scrum Mater is one person. Why can’t this accountability be shared by multiple people. Many teams alternate the role or split the responsibilities. These teams can perfectly work with Scrum AND having multiple Scrum Masters.

Based on Robert C. Martin, (one of the Agile manifesto signatories) actually says that was the original intention, each sprint or even during the sprint the SM role would go from one team member to the other, with the intention of making the role obsolete after the team “got the hang of the process”.
I can imagine however how “popular” this point will be with all the ceritifcation money machines…

It’s important to understand what accountability means. Just because one person is accountable, doesn’t mean that others cannot perform similar duties. They can and in my opinion should. Ultimatly Scrum is a team game and everyone in it is responsible for mastering the game. The Scrum Master ultimatly carries the accountability for it and should be respected for resolving discrepencies. If there are multiple people with different intentions and backgrounds being accountable for it, this generally causes confusion and conflict.

I’m not debating other people can have these duties too. I’m debating that it doen’t make sense when the accountability is shared that these teams don’t do Scrum anymore.

Again, too many cooks in the kitchen. Let’s have just one SM in the team, but no one prevents team members from supporting a SM or even rotating this role within a team. Having more than one accountable SM at a time will affect transparency and communication.

For new teams to Scrum I think this is really important to have a single scrum master … that “too many cooks in the kitchen”. The focus is lowered and the impact is lowered.

The point a team takes ownership of empericism (transparency, inspection and adaptation) is the moment that this comes into question. At this point everyone has the psychological safety of really improving things that are not working well and are committed to doing that. What happens is the SM then starts working at different levels and spends more time out of team and working with cross-team, cross-department and the organisation at large.

However, I still feel the need to have someone look at the what is going on from the outside. The reason is when caught up in the doing, one is more focused on tactical problems and often one cannot see it stratigically and from the outside. Anyone in that SM role should have an outward-in view as this balances and gives a different perspective.

An experienced team will have worked through the team dynamic issues and will naturally take on one the accountability of transparency, inspection and adaptation. This empericism ownership is what a SM wants to achieve.

I feel that this idea is confusing the SM’s accountability with team ownership of emepricism to the point the team actively use Scrum.

I stick to my original statement: arevteams with multiple Scrum Masters not doing Scrum? I find the restriction of one person unreasonable. It could be a recommendation instead.

Can’t agree more @Willem-Jan Ageling