The Product Owner Who Is Also the Tech Lead
At a 12-person company, the most senior engineer holds two titles: Product Owner and Tech Lead. She orders the Product Backlog, sets the Sprint Goal, and also assigns technical tasks to the Developers, reviews their code, and decides architecture. The Developers rarely challenge her because she is also their line manager and conducts their performance reviews. Sprint Planning has become her explaining what to build and how. Two Developers have quietly stopped proposing alternatives. The Scrum Master is new and has been told "this is how we've always done it."
1. Identify the accountability conflicts in this setup and why they matter for Scrum.
Read the worked answer
Several accountabilities are conflated:
- Product Owner is accountable for maximizing value and managing the Product Backlog. That is legitimate.
- Tech Lead assigning tasks, reviewing code, and deciding architecture overlaps with what the Developers self-manage. The Developers are accountable for turning backlog items into an increment and for organizing their own work.
- Line manager conducting performance reviews creates a power dynamic that suppresses dissent, which is exactly what the two silent Developers show.
The conflict matters because Scrum depends on self-management and on the Product Owner and Developers negotiating scope and approach as peers. When one person owns the backlog, the technical decisions, and the careers of the team, the Developers cannot push back without personal risk, and empiricism degrades into one person's opinion.
2. How should the new Scrum Master proceed, given the "this is how we've always done it" resistance?
Read the worked answer
The Scrum Master should avoid a confrontational public challenge and instead work through influence and evidence:
- Build a relationship with the Product Owner and frame the issue in terms of her own goals - better value delivery, less bottleneck, more capacity.
- Use concrete observations (e.g., Sprint Planning is one-directional; two Developers have stopped contributing) to make the cost visible.
- Coach the Developers toward self-management incrementally, e.g., having them propose their own technical approach in Planning.
- Raise the structural conflict (PO + line manager) with whoever can act on it, since the Scrum Master cannot unilaterally change reporting lines.
The Scrum Master serves the organization by removing impediments, but must do so through coaching and influence, not by issuing orders.
3. Is it acceptable for the Product Owner to also be a Developer on the team?
Read the worked answer
Scrum does not forbid a Product Owner from having technical skills, and small organizations often combine roles. But the accountabilities must remain distinct and transparent. If the Product Owner also does development work, the risk is that Product Backlog ordering, Sprint Goal setting, and technical decisions blur, and the Developers lose the ability to negotiate scope because the person setting priorities is also doing and reviewing the work.
The practical test: can the Developers challenge priorities and technical approach without fear, and is someone clearly accountable for value? If not, the combination is harming the team even if it is not formally prohibited.