AA122 - What to Do When the Scrum Master and Product Owner are the Same Person

If you've been on the old YouTube a while, you've heard the question, should the same person play the role of the product owner and the scrum master? Obviously the answer is no. We're not gonna talk about that today. If you're in this position, what can you bring to your management to convince them that this is not an optimal situation? And then how you go about splitting these roles. Yeah. So as always, tons and tons of value in, this episode. Just like all the other episodes, don't forget the subscribe and like we're gonna do this differently this time. Also, Ayo is back. He, how Ayo Ayo is back. Welcome back. He may or may not be putting, random fingers in the air that mean things. I don't know what fingers he's shooting at people. If only we had intro music as well to, double down on. So, let's get the textbook portion of this podcast outta the way right quick. Conflict of interest is gonna be the first thing that you see. So let's read the one line description definitely of product owner and scrum master and get that out of the way cuz this is probably the, thing that I am least interested in discussing so it says you gotta read both lines. The product owner is accountable for maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Scrum team. Second line. Second line. The Scrum master is accountable for establishing Scrum as defined in the scrum guide. They do this by helping everyone understand scrum theory and practice, both within the Scrum team and the organization. So it says that the product owner is accountable for the success of the product. It says Scrum master is accountable for the, effectiveness of the Scrum team. So those are two different prerogatives. Right? Right. I'm just saying there's two different things. It's like saying, well, you have roles on the team. Let's say you have your, linebacker and you have your quarterback, can they both be the same person? That's what we're talking about, really different roles. Can they be done by the same person? Those two are completely, I don't know, they're completely decoupled in my brain. I'm representing the product, product owner slash product manager in this podcast. I spend time with the development team working on solutions on the technical side of the house so that when I flip over to the, strategy and, and pricing and marketing side of the house, I can do a whole different job that the team needs me to do, to promote and to move forward their product line. And they need me in that business. I don't ever think I've been in a workplace where they've asked the product owner to also do scrum master responsibilities. I think it's always the other way around. You hire Scrum Master and you expect him to also be the product owner. I don't know if I've seen the other way around. So I've actually been in such roles in the past where, I've been hired as a scrum master, and then I'm acting as the product owner, the guy who is, did, did you know that going into the role or did you get into the role and say, Hey, you know a lot about product, why don't you help with this? And then suddenly helping is actually you doing the role full-time? in the last role I didn't, I did not know going in. I just assumed that I was gonna be a, a scrum master. Yeah. And then found out that, oh yeah, we don't have a product owner for this particular, for your teams uhhuh, not just team teams. So you just gonna have to wing it, but luckily I had a manager who kind of was in those meetings. So he, he, he is more of a subject matter expert. Mm-hmm. So he kind of acted as that, but I still had to bring that those skills and those reports back to the team. Because I'm the one working with the team, the manager's not working with the team. He's just, I'm providing high level discussions and okay, here's what we've done and here's where we are to him. And then he's in that meeting with me being a subject matter expert, saying, okay, based on what the team has done, here's the next steps, here's things like that. But yeah, acting in that capacity of being, yes, fulltime, scrum master, but then playing a role of Scrum master, because I think the last one was more of, in, in infrastructure type stuff. Yeah. So we really, we were doing more backend stuff, so they felt that, okay, because this is backend stuff, there's not really much to demo to the users, so they didn't really need to hire products, which in some ways I kind of agree, but it's still had, I still have that. Being overburdened of, actually that's how I got my start in product. I don't know if I ever told you that story or not. I got my start in product. I was a QA manager and we, we had, we had tons of backend development tools, backend development tools to look up things in the database, backend development tools, investigate problems in logs, backend tools to aggregate all the logs together and show 'em in one, one dashboard backend tools to interface with things and change things or whatever and whatever, delete records or things like that. We had tons of backend tools that the development team had created, just by being basically the only technical people in a small company. And at some point, like one of the C-level executives is like, look, that's enough. Like we have so many tools floating around that the developers, when, when they're working on their normal in sprint work, in pursuit of a sprint goal, they, they're like, well, I have to stop to go enhance this tool or to change this tool and they were kind of doing the stuff. On on the, on the dl. Yeah. You know what I mean? They were kind of just kind of sneaking it in cuz it was something the developers knew and they're like, look, we, we need transparency. We have to have somebody who knows what the state of all these tools are, who can, who can talk to all these tools and about what their purpose is and, and talk about the roadmap. Where are we gonna be in two years? What kind of support tools we have now? What do we need in the future? We need a product owner. They, they said product owner because they, because this was not like all these tools were internal facing, so they didn't really think there was a marketing component. They didn't really think there was like a, a, a strategy component to this kind of stuff. That's why they called it product owner. We need someone to play the role part-time And, they happen to say like you're a manager. You should be able to take on an additional responsibility for the company cuz you know the, oh, you got a gr bright future here kid. You know, that, that kind of stuff. And they, they basically just like pointed at me and is like, Hey, do you want to take on this extra responsibility? And that was my first product owner roles, internal tools all the development teams, would use like, Hey, build me a roadmap, figure out what we're gonna work on. I actually was a product owner without a team. Mm-hmm. I had to go to the other product managers that had teams and ask them, Hey, you seem to be intersecting with this functionality in your next sprint or two. Do you think you can ask your team to add this enhancement to my tool? And that's, That's how I did anything. I didn't have a team. I could just be like, Hey, they work for me fulltime, and I'll just give them stuff to do. I had to go beg other product managers, you know what I mean? It, it was, I mean like, I would never want to wor I gonna say, I would never take that job again. You work in a tool factory, right? Agile. Is that agile? Well, its, I that's really agile. It's, it's fragile, agile, but it, it's, it's getting there. Right? You're not there. At least somebody had the wherewithal to say, we're a two factory. Yeah. 26 tools and counting. Listen, so let's have someone, I mean from a, meet them where they are perspective from, from like an advanced agile coach, like trying to sell you their book or training or whatever. Like, oh, buy my, wares on the internet. Hey, at least the executives went out and said, look, we see that this is a tool set that we are developing in-house. We should have somebody a, a single point of contact wrapped their arms around all the tools. And put a roadmap together even if we can't afford a team yet, and have them beg, borrow, and steal development time from other product managers, like at least they're, at least they're collaborating with other people to, to move their roadmap forward. Interesting that you got into it that way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mine, mine was slightly different. Oh, really? Uh, yeah. Yeah. I, I was a scrum master at, one of the several teams at, at this, this one place, and we had a really good product owner. I mean, she was a rockstar, and then she took maternity. So they're like, well, we've put a, we put a requisition out. We just can't find anybody as good as her. Yeah. So you're right. So this is very topical for me because one day I walk into work, I'm a scrum master and the po Yeah. That changed pretty quickly after that because I just didn't have enough hours in the day. Mm-hmm. And I wasn't servicing either side, realistically in any way, shape, or form. But the scrum guide, just to wrap up, that mm-hmm. Really doesn't have much of a much of a guidance on this. Right. Did you say. Role eight, role B, what they're accountable for. And that's it. Yeah. Yeah. My critique of the scrum guide here is it says, Hey, they're just roles. Like, these are not positions, they're roles. Anyone can quote, play the role. I mean, you can find anybody with a podcast they're gonna have covered this. But then like, developer is just another role in the scrum guide. But I would be interested to search those channels for people talking about Scrum master and PO in a role. I'd be interested to see if they're, they're saying the same thing about developers and scrum master or developers and pos, like PO being a role that developers do, I think would be an interesting podcast to talk about as well. so are we saying there's a chance that a developer can play either of those other roles since it's not a position, it's not a job. It's a role within the Scrum team. You never say never. It never play. But there's different skills, skills involved though, right? A product owner isn't simply just a backlog manager, right? They're not simply just prioritizing the backlog, they're actually working with, if you don't have product managers, your product owner is also taking on some of those duties as well. So they have to interface with the customers. They have to figure out the strategy of the product constantly. They have to figure out the pricing, all of those things. And then you could argue a developer could do that, but I'd say most developers aren't comfortable in those situations where they have to talk about pricing, they have to talk about marketing, work with sales, work with customers, right? Yeah. Anytime I see someone playing more than one role from the scrum guide to the scrum team, I have to think like, what are they dropping, what are they not doing? It sounds like you have some things in your day job and now you're taking on a nighttime job. It sounds like you're doing working two jobs To me that's, if I'm running a company, I want someone doing the best development job possible. Same thing when I think about product owner, I, I, I don't just want my product owner involved, in writing good stories and having the BA skillset and stuff like that I want them interfacing with sales. I want all the salespeople to know my product owner. I want my salespeople to trust my product people so much that they grab them and bring them into all their sales demos and presentations. But bottom line, the company's the one that, that, that started this problem in the first place. They're trying to save money by saying, Hey, I've, I hired, just hired this Scrum Master, and I want him to be the product owner. So they're the ones that causes this problem in the first place because, so maybe so to their defense, right, they may not know, they may not know the depth of what these roles actually entail, right? They may think, well, you're working with the team, aren't you? You're there working with the team, product owner and scrum master. What do you do all day? You work with the team too, so why do we need two people to work with? The teams when I see a development team member playing the role of a scrum master, I immediately envision somebody who is overburdened. Before we started the podcast, I talked to om about, when I was, on contract one time, I was playing the role of, of multiple roles on the scrum team. Mm-hmm. And I remember the, the, the, the, the contract, the, the point of contact for the contract, the, whoever, the, I don't know, I don't remember the delivery manager. Delivery manager, yeah. Whatever they're called. The, the, the person who manages a contract at that, at that, organization. I remember them saying like, we are willing to, to support you, however you think the contract will be most effective. So if you need to basically point at people on the, on the development team and say, you are now the product owner and you are now the scrum master and then move yourself back up to a more coaching, executive coaching type of position. I figure somebody who's doing the product owner and scrum master role, they're probably overburdened, they're probably doing, and not probably definitely overburdened like a, let's think about this for a second. Actually, you know what we didn't talk about up until this point, people doing this role that are like development leads, a lot of development leads get caught in the role of like, well you are answerable to the product. Mm-hmm. For the technical piece. Technical direction, yeah. Which ends up basically being prioritization. Right? Right. And then, but then you're also, answerable to all the development work, the actual in, like in the weeds development work. Sure. So you end up basically playing both these roles and you don't even know it because your organization doesn't hire a scrum master and they don't really define clearly the product owner slash manager. So you end up doing both of these. So if you're in that position, it would be great to back up a second and be like, well actually if I, and especially if you have multiple teams to back up a second and say, well actually, why don't I just pick people on the team? Be like, you are the scrum master now. You are the product owner now. And then I'm gonna play more of a collaborative coaching type of role. Where I help you connect to the business when you need the help. Otherwise, I'm going to trust that you can get the job done, and when you fail to get the job done, I'll step in. And when you ask, when you scream for help to get the job done, I'll step in. I, I think that's, that's a really valid point is that you as this kind of coach, right, agile coach or or consultant, you are the safety net for these people. Yes. So they know they can't fail, right? They can't fail hard because you're there to catch 'em. But the other side of it is when before you do that, I think you need to look at the teams and say, do they have the right kind of skillsets to carry out these roles? Yeah. You may need to supplant those. So if you're a coach, maybe just have a couple of webinars or, or, sessions with your team members and bring their skillsets up a little, even though you're there to catch 'em. Yeah. They're gonna feel pretty vulnerable otherwise, right. Yeah. It's like saying, well, a football team has a, a linebacker and a, and a, quarterback. Can one person do both? Yeah. I'm gonna ask Tom Brady that when I see him in Miami. Isn't the business gonna tell you like, you're not excelling at any one job. Isn't that what the business is gonna say? That's exactly what the business is going to say. But they may not even know that you're not excelling other than, what they're gonna look at is, the metrics, or are they're gonna look at the metrics, right? And then they're gonna say, we're not getting this, we are also not getting this. Right. Who's, who's on, who, who's on for that? It's this one guy. Pardon? Or one person. Like, part of being overburdened is this reduction, reduction of accountability. If you're trying to play the role with, with one person. And management is trying to hold him accountable and saying, well, you know what? Like, the team's not really evolving and what, and then, but you're also flipping over to Well, also like the product is not really moving into the markets I want, like those are two different conversations. Like I'm trying to say it's difficult for management to hold one person accountable for both the team evolution, internal type stuff, and also the product on the market evolution. Hey, om, well, welcome to Brian oms, software Development Company Ayo okay. Well, welcome tha thanks for being our, our new employee Ayo. You're in charge for this specific thing for the business. That's why we hired you. Yep. You, you went through the, the hiring process. We told you all about this accountability. We, we showed it from all sides. We showed it from the good side, from the bad side. We expose you all to all sides of it. This is your accountability. Now we're everybody in the business, we're directing to you about this one thing. Yep. Okay. So one thing though, not 15 things. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? Not three things, not six things. Like how many things can we dump on you and say, Hey, everybody. From all around the business is gonna ask you about this now, and they're all gonna come to you. And they're gonna ask you about a half dozen things. Yep. Potentially unrelated. And that's, and that's where those two points come in. They've being overburdened and the conflict of interest is like, okay, I'm supposed to be able to support the team and making sure they're delivering right and the value and all that stuff. But at the same time, I'm supposed to support the business and making sure that the business, I'm getting all the right information from the business, I'm getting all the requirements and. Yeah, I'm able to present back to the business what is there, and that's where, yeah, those two points come in because there's a conflict of, okay, who do I, who, who am I loyal to? Am I loyal to the team? Who are you serving, right? Yeah. Am I loyal to the team? Am I loyal to the business? Am I serving the team? Am I serving the business? And then if I'm serving both, then that makes me feel overburdened. And is a company willing to pay that? Are we gonna go back to the, to the, well, a million dollar paycheck that, what's the name Andrew Carnegie gave, was getting, well, I think, think be able to pay that much these days, but as a scrum master, one, one of the things you do is to coach up in the organization, right? So I think it behooves a scrum master, even if you're playing the role, when other responsibilities are thrust upon you, to elevate that when you're coaching up, just say, look, I can do one thing really, really well, or I can do two things not so well. Or I can do 15 things terribly. Right? What would you like me to do? Ask executives that. With regard to startups, yes. So you could have multiple things, multiple hats, as is colloquially known. Right. But then there you have to make a decision for yourself. Is this worth it for you to be overburdened? Right. You know, looking at all these stock options that you got, which may or may not materialize. I can tell you as a former paper millionaire, I'm still sitting here. So anyway, that's a decision an individual has to make for themselves. But it still is within your role as a scrum master to elevate this topic that you're overburdened. Right? Well, it's, it's, and guide your leadership toward, again, the Right, right. Solution, solution. If you are at the point where I've got 10, okay, if I got a food truck and I'm serving 10 customers, that's cool. I, I could be the cook, I could be the server, I could be all of that. Sure. But if I'm opening an Applebee's where I got a hundred or 200 people coming in there, I can't be everything. So if you're small enough, that's fine. I could be everything. Not according to the Scrum guide. Hey, according to the Scrum guy, you do everything. Remember Scrum guide and say it's a role, it's not a position, it's not a person. It's a role. I understand. I understand. So, If that role can be accomplished by one person for one project, that's small enough. I know that's fine. But when you are talking about, oh, I gotta deliver this huge mansion or this huge shopping center, I can't be the, the electrician, the, the plumber, the brick layer, the architect and all of that. I've never been in the position where I'm the product owner and the scrum master. However, I have been in the position where I'm the product owner, product owner, role slash product manager, and I'm the expert in the room with regard to anything they're gonna talk about Scrum master related cuz like, I'm not only the company's first product hire, but I'm also the person in the company who has the most experience in agility. Agility, yes. Yes. In agile, so by default people in the company are coming to me to ask me questions. So whereas I am not their scrum master, even their scrum master is coming to me asking me basic questions and stuff like that. And I'm trying to help them. I, as the product person, I'm trying to justify a business case why they need to separate the role and make it an individual job, not just a role that someone does for part-time. Yeah. You know, I don't, I don't want it to be a part-time thing because I know this company may not ha, may not have reached a maturity level to understand that they need this role full-time. But I'm trying to evolve this product towards the future. I only want to kind of be consulted in these discussions. To move them forward. I need somebody else to do all that. And you can have a business leader, maybe like a, if you have a really talented, I don't know, director of operations or something like that, maybe they have the talent to do this kind of stuff. But I mean, I mean, if you're an Agile coach listening to this like, Hey, there's one right here. Congratulations. You have what it takes to, to run operations for a small to medium sized business because that's, that's basically what agile coaches do all day. They say like, well, this team talks to this team in this manner, and this team operates back to the rest of the business in this manner. They talk about the, the way teams communicate with each other and the way teams are set up. And I, I need someone to be an expert at all that. So it seems like we're dangerously getting into a part where, at least to me, that we're talking about maybe the guys who made the update to the 2020 Scrum guide were wrong by making these roles. No, I, I, I don't think so. I, I, I think the updates, were really a reaction to the objections. I get the whole obvious, but I'm talking about that, that part of making these functions roles because if you're saying there are roles, that means anybody can do it. That's right. Anybody can do it, but should they do it? That's question we're asking. That's the same thing on the podcast. So I think if you look at the essence of the scrum guide, it relates to a Scrum team. Sure. It doesn't say, this is how you stamp out multiple Scrum teams and you scale up in a way that makes sense. Mm-hmm. There's none of that in the Scrum guide. In fact, go search the scrum guide for the word scale. I won't do it. No, you shouldn't do it because you'd be very underwhelmed by the results, right? So, okay. It makes sense for people who are adopting Scrum from scratch, right? You have a team, let's, let's have that team look at the scrum guide, implement that to the letter T, and they will succeed. But then what happens next? What's next? And I think when, when we're talking about a single individual playing the role of the product owner and the scrum master, at the same time, we've already possibly evolved beyond a single team, possibly because the organization is looking at cutting costs or saving costs, right? They're saying, well, we don't need two people to do this. There comes a time when you look at that and say, one person can possibly do the job, but don't, don't, they won't do it very well. First of all, why won't they do it very well? Because they're, and we talked about how they're overburdened, right? How do you relay that messaging up to your management? Yeah. Or, or leadership. If you have their ear, how do you say to them, listen, I'm one person. I can do both of these things, but I can't do a good job at either of those two things. Right? Yeah. So you have to find a way. Otherwise what's gonna happen is the onus is on you now to keep working, and they'll just crack the way harder. You're not working hard enough. And that's exactly what's gonna, that's exactly what usually happens, right? Well, because it's like they keep looking at you as, oh, you're failing at this one part. And that's exactly what happened to me at, at one of my previous positions. Mm-hmm. Like I was, to me, I was knocking it out as a scrum master, but then that BSA, which was probably pretty much just a product owner part, I sucked at it because I, I told him straight up, This is not who I am. Yeah. When I got started, so when I had one manager that hired me to say, okay, come on board and fine, I get this is your skillset, I'm gonna hire for that skillset. And I did the whole transformation because they, they were doing like, what, twice a week daily Scrum? So we gotta daily scrum, we gotta have retros because they were not even bothering with the retros. So sounds like it was a classic bait and switch. So when you came in there and find you, you, you say, okay, this is the job I was hired for and I'm knocking at the park. And then you have a new manager that wants you to say, okay, yes. Even though the title we hired you as is a bsa, but. We, your work you're doing is a scrum. I said, yeah, we want you to go back to that BSA type work. Yeah. And then I'm like, well, yes. I can't do that. And then there's that back and forth confidence that Okay, yeah. That you don't really work for us, so you know what? Uh, we just gonna have to let you go., I wanna stick with pretty, with the, it's problem too, though. It, it is like, sadly, like that's, that's funny. Unfortunately, that's what happened. I would always try to lobby to align the job role or the, at least the title of the job with the expectation, because I, when you get too far from the expectation, Of the job. I've had the same thing I've had, I've changed, whatever reporting officials or bosses, whatever, whatever you wanna call it. Right. I've, I've changed people on paper, right. Where I do the same job theoretically. Mm-hmm. But now I'm working for a different department or different boss or whatever, and, not expected something different. There's different expectations. Yeah. And that, that could happen, different expectations. I feel like where, where OM started going into this category was he was talking about, well, to a company that doesn't understand the value of the role on paper in terms of money. They don't have a way to put value to this type of role. Mm-hmm. Capital One, for example, they said, well, well the, the product owners on the team, the product managers will, will, I, I don't know if the product owners or product managers, they said the product owners will, will shoulder that responsibility and that's fine, for a short period of time, yes, show me, show me on paper what the impact of having that one person do this dual role will be. show me what the impact will be. The business case that I would try to represent if I was in the role of doing both of these responsibilities, first of all, I'd never be in that role cuz I would just leave. Mm-hmm. But if, if I was in that role, the, the business case that I would try to represent would be something along the lines of showing what we're missing out with regard to improved focus of the person or persons highlighting what I can't get to while I'm doing all this team facilitation stuff. As a product manager, I would approach it on the product side. I would say, because I'm doing all this team facilitation stuff, here are the things that I can't put my time into. I would like to be, do be doing user journey maps. I would like to be working with sales. I would like to be going to every sales demo that the sales team is, putting on to, to, to see how they demo the product. I would like to be working with marketing. Every time when they put together a new campaign and understanding how their metrics are rolling out and and how what I'm doing in the product can impact what they're tracking. I would like to talk about the whole team facilitation side cuz usually businesses don't understand what goes into team facilitation. What does that mean? Team facilitation? Well, you can't quantify it that that's the issue with facilitation, right? Yeah. You can't quantify it. And so people just basically pay lip service to it. Like, well, you, you're a developer, you speak well, you can facilitate anything. Right? Right. You know, go to the G seven summit and go facilitate. no, people are not able to do that. Right. Very effectively. Right, right. So, in this example that we are now talking about, management, possibly leadership mm-hmm. Sought to save money, obviously Right. By collapsing these roles. Unfortunately those people that were impacted. I'm guessing that they did not speak up and say, here's the opportunity cost, right? Yes. You can save money. So that's the, let's just draw two columns and go, here's the, here's the money savings and here's the loss of productivity. Loss of effectiveness. Now that, that second column is harder to quantify. Yeah. And what you need to do is work with your teams and say, what if there was no po? Right or what if there was no fill in the blank. Right. Right. A scrum master for a sprint, what does that mean? So you extrapolate that out and you say, o over a month, this is the amount of money. In opportunity cost that we're losing, right? How So you have two columns that one says, well, how much you're saving, one says how much you're losing, and you do that for every element. And then at the bottom you have a total and it speaks for itself. So I think we're at the, at that point in the podcast to say, if you're in this situation where, let's say you have been tapped to play multiple roles, right? So you're a scrum master and a PO or you're development team member and a scrum master or development team member and a PO whatever combination, they're ofof. How do you actually even begin to frame the challenges that you have, right? Right. You can say, oh look, I'm overburdened. That's enough. That's not enough. It's not, it's not enough. It's absolutely not enough. Here's how do you do, that's the problem, right? Here's the problem. Right. The problem is like, like I've said, I've played this role, so I know exactly where the problem is. When they interview you, they, they, yes. Sometimes they disclose that, that, okay, they want you to play this role so. Obviously if they feel you don't have it, you're just not gonna get hired. but that's the easy path out. This like the, the, the, the more difficult path is, you find yourself in the role developer playing multiple roles or a scrum master and a PO together, you know what I mean? That kind of stuff. You find yourself in the role and like, now, how are you gonna lobby the organization to say, look like you guys gotta get me outta this. You, you gotta separate the scrum master side. Or, well, I guess it, it could be the developer saying, you guys gotta separate this scrum master stuff from the team members. It needs its own person. We're doing so much coordination, so much, breaking down the silos and stuff like that. You need a person to do this full time. Same thing with product. I, I, I think in small organizations where the developers are doing product. The developers could say like, listen, like you need people to coordinate with customers. You need people to, to figure out pricing. Figure out your roadmap full-time. Figure out your marketing strategy full-time. Like, I can't, I'm a developer. I can't do this anymore. I think part of that, it goes back to what I was saying is, it doesn't matter what role you play, whether you're a development team member, product owner, scru master, if you can come up with a way to quantify, cuz the only way to have this conversation with these management folks is in terms of what they understand, right. Which is dollars. Yeah. The, the reason why you have, why they're consolidating these roles is because they're either not wanting to spend the money or are wanting to save the money. Right. Right. Yeah. So create a typically it's a spreadsheet and put two columns on the spreadsheet. One is, this is the first column where, put enumerate everything you do right. And try and say, well, it's a two week, let's say you're doing two week sprints, and say how much time you're spending in hours, you're loading costs, right. Loaded costs per hour. If you don't know, it doesn't matter. Guess at it. And, and create that and say, I'm spending four hours, every other day, or whatever it is. Right, right. So every activity is enumerated in that way. Then what you do is you create a second column. And then you, and underneath all of those activities, cuz they pertain to a role. Let's say you're a scrum master, they pertain to a scrum master role and the ask is they're wanting you to do a product role in addition to being a scrum master, let's say for example. So underneath of all of those, those roles that, enumerate, scrum master responsibilities, You now put down all of those rows, additional rows for product owner responsibilities. Mm-hmm. Okay. And then you take a guess at, well, how much time you think it's going to take you every whatever day. Right. Would you do it for a sprint? Because a sprint loaded cost is easier to calculate. So you do it that way. And then you say for, for all of these, an additional ask is this, why am I asking this to be a separate column? You may ask or you may not. But I asked, so the reason why is this? So you can, you can actually show them front and back if you like. Right. So you can say, well, as a scrum master, I am doing all these things. Mm-hmm. And here is the loaded cost to the organization for me as a scrum master. And then likewise, having a second column allows you to do this and say ditto for a product owner role. So a loaded cost for a partner of, for a sprint is this, you, you can say a day, it doesn't matter, right? Assuming all days are equal, I think, I think all of that better. So you can say that and then you can now go back armed with real information and have a conversation with your execs and say, a single person can do all of these things. But you look at all those hours, right? They add up to a lot more than eight hours a day. But again, how, how is this any different than, than you going to the product owner and be like, Hey, I want you to build a website that does function A and I want you to build a website that does function B. And then the product owner's like, great. Which one do you want me to do first? No, both. Both. I want you to do both of them. Oh yeah. I'm gonna add to this. Right. I had two columns. If those of you that are still with us, recall and a third call, call it opportunity cost, okay. And then put in all of those things and say why you're not able to do all of those things that Brian's hotline, all, everything we can do, we are human. We can do all of these things. You know, Steve Austin, right? We can rebuild him. Those of you that are sixties years old can relate to that. Anyway, the point is, the point is, if you have those three columns, you have numbers. When you have numbers, you have some basis to speak about these. And then you can go back and say, I just might wanna remind you, I get paid for a 40 hour week, right? Mm-hmm. And here, we're looking at 68 hours a week. Listen, like Yeah, I know, I know, I know. You get paid for a 40 hour week on the podcast. I know. But also you can only bill 40 hours. Regardless of how much time you turn in. If you're going through an approach to try to convince your company, this is the better way of doing things. Let me speak the language that you understand, which is financials. If you're unwilling to change your language to financials to make a breakthrough with the company, and maybe you can't do this at all when you're outside the company, like if you're trying to get interviewed or like interviewed to go into a company mm-hmm. It may not be possible to do this unless you're talking directly to founders of the company or the ceo, right. Then maybe yes, I will concede. Maybe it's not possible at all. But if you're inside, I would start with a phased approach to say that, why don't we try. This new program, like usually companies can try to get dollars for a specific program or purpose or something, you know what I mean? They, they can do financial tricks to say, Hey, we're gonna fund this initiative, and then if it doesn't work, then it doesn't make profit. And they can write, do a tax write off and stuff like that. Why don't, why don't we try a pilot program where we bring on a scrum master like role slash job for, contract for six months, three months, whatever it is and we need some metrics to, to measure before and after the program. So before the program, we wanna, we wanna send out a survey, maybe an internal survey. How happy are you with the backlog? How happy are you with your interactions with this department or that department or this team or that team. How happy are you with the delivery speed of whatever? How happy are you with quality of whatever? and then maybe we run that survey again after three months, after we have this person. Who's Jo? Three months is probably a shorten amount of time. Maybe six months. I don't you arguable, right? Yeah. maybe if you don't wanna do that, if you don't wanna commit to a, to hiring people or spending money, maybe you just spend some money on coaching. Say, Hey, maybe we can get somebody outside to come in and coach our teams. maybe this person who's playing the dual role of product manager and also Scrum master on the team. Maybe we get somebody and, spend a couple hours a week, an hour a week, two hours a week, whatever. Maybe you'll maybe just an hour one-on-one per week. Just talk about your problems. Hey, I'm, I'm having problems. Come tell So about, have a psychologist now. Yeah. Have a seat on the couch. Therapist. Have a seat on the couch. Ayo tell me about your problems. Have psych, you're an Agile therapist. let, let me wrap up. If, if your favorite football team has a quarterback, And a linebacker and both of those guys are playing the same role. You, I'm just saying your team is probably not gonna win the Super Bowl, but when they don't. Introspect and figure out why. I think that's being the focus of this whole podcast is one person cannot be everything. If you like this podcast, go to arguing agile.com. 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