The Product Owner, The Scrum Master, His Manager & Her Boss

There is a pattern I think is very common in organisations that are transitioning to Agile: the sense of losing hierarchical references.
Modern organisations are strongly permeated with hierarchy. And not only organisations, individuals as well.
It seems to be a common thinking that it is natural, in life as well, not only at work, to have a boss, as an obvious, inexorable fact.
As if there were an intrinsic universal law saying that something is do-able only if a boss has told us to do it. To the extent to assign to supreme and divine entities hierarchical relations, to preserve the consistency of this model.
I'm not going to dwell in anthropological justification, but I think that the structure of modern companies probably comes from the beginnings of industrialisation era, strongly influenced by military hierarchies.
Now, I've already digressed a lot on this concept, and it's the case I leave to the anthropologists the burden to explain why hierarchical structure is so ingrained in our culture, minds and communities.
The point is, when a company decides to take the leap of faith for an agile framework, most of the times it happens to be Scrum. No matter how well the framework is implemented, how good the Scrum Master is and how the teams keep up, there is a problem that usually emerges (at least according to my experience): the fight for power.
Things start changing when you adopt the new framework. So, who is the boss now? Who takes the decisions?
I've been asked in many occasions to give a presentation about Scrum and Agile methodologies in general, especially by companies who have been implementing agile for a while and would like to have a fresh view.
During my presentations I like to involve the audience asking some questions.
Most of the times I improvise the questions on the spur of the moment, depending on the vibes I get. Sometimes, apparently harmless questions can reveal a lot.
For example, when I present the typical three roles of Scrum: Team Member, Scrum Master and Product Owner, I then ask: "Who is the boss amongst these three?"
According to the mental model of the audience, the answer is usually either the PO or the SM. Rarely, only when the audience's formed prevalently of developers or there's someone trying to play smart, the answer is the TM.
No matter how clever you think you are, at the end of the day your mental bias will trick you.
And, yes, here we are, eventually at the core of the question: Scrum doesn't define a chain of command neither a hierarchical structure.
The three roles - well the people impersonating them - should deliberately cooperate.
In no Schwaber's or Beck's book, I've come across with any hierarchical definition among the Three Roles of Scrum.
Yeah, it looks like they tricked us.
They left us alone, playing our daily, absurd plot of lovers and haters, bosses and traitors, commanders and executors, conquerors and defeated, climbers and besieged.
Mostly as the characters of one of my favourite films: The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
If you've followed me so far you're probably thinking: so what? What do we do then?
I'll answer that in the next post.
Stay tuned!

Introduction

Hi, I'm a veteran software developer, with many years of experience practicing, and occasionally coaching, agile (XP, Scrum, Kanban, Lean),  even though my main and favourite professional activity remains coding.

Some years ago I moved to UK and, in this blog, I'd like to tell you about my adventures, learnings and thoughts since I joined this exotic tribe in the middle of the Thames Valley: The British.

DISCLAIMER 1:
I may use a humorous or irreverent tone every now and then, just because I like to put things in a playful and funny way: no offense intended.

DISCLAIMER 2:
All characters appearing in this blog are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

DISCLAIMER 3:
English is not my first language and, truth be told, not even the second, if I look back to the last ten years. Hence I apologise in advance for my poor writing. This blog is also an opportunity for me to improve my communication skills.

Feel free to comment and to correct.