Practice: Dual roles

Posted on by Oliver

The curse of the capable
You probably know the joke: “Because I always do my work quickly and neatly, I get the work of others in addition as a thank you”. This joke is unfortunately pure reality and because tasks often come with certain responsibilities, new responsibilities usually come for free; at least if you don’t do the tasks poorly. The responsibilities, in turn, are part of certain roles and so sometimes you “gain” a complete role.

Curse and blessing
A day has only 24 hours and even though probably everyone knows someone who “gets by on 4 hours of sleep”: Our time is limited, especially productive time.
So we cannot take over every role of our organization. On the other hand, it’s nice to be able to decide things for yourself, in that you happen to hold the role whose decision you need at the moment.

What do you think?
I have created a list of advantages and disadvantages, which does not claim to be complete. Feel free to send me an email if you think of further points/aspects that should be mentioned. From your point of view, do the disadvantages outweigh the advantages?

  • Disadvantage: Loss of creativity
    If the competition of ideas takes place as a discussion of two roles in the head of only one person, the discussion becomes short and one-sided.
    Advantage: Quick decision making
  • Disadvantage: Conflicts of interest
    When someone has a dual role, it is unclear to third parties from which responsibility a statement is derived. It is not apparent why something was said or decided.
    E.g., a tester scrum master might say, “We can’t deliver that to the customers!”. It is unclear whether the tester is speaking and sees quality deficiencies or the scrum master who expects a review with the product owner beforehand. As a developer, two solution options arise: Improve the quality or plan a review with the product owner.
    Advantage: None, at best for the dual role owner: He can hide wrong decisions because decision reasons of several roles are available.
  • Disadvantage: Ambiguities in the process
    Over time, the role boundaries become blurred in the minds of everyone involved: If a developer is also a product owner, parts of the product owner’s tasks appear to other developers as developer tasks. At the latest when prioritizing the product backlog, conflicts between several developers and product owners can become a problem.
    Softening the process in this way allows its free interpretation according to the whim of the individual.
    Advantage: None.
  • Disadvantage: Bus factor
    The more roles and responsibilities individual employees have, the greater the risk for the organization when they are absent. Often a vacation or illness is enough – or a dismissal (e.g. due to overload/overstrain/burnout/…). Even without the demise, there is a loss for the organization: in case of vacation, illness, etc. even recurring.
    Advantage: None, at most for dual role holders: it is easier for him to negotiate advantages for his “indispensability”, e.g. a higher salary.
  • Disadvantage: Prioritization error
    A person’s brilliance often shows in critical situations. It becomes difficult when two of these situations meet, which should actually have been separated into 2 roles and thus decoupled. For example, when a developer scrum master finds a critical error shortly before the retrospective: To fix the bug quickly, he may forget to prepare the retrospective; this may be right if the bug is more important. However, if he simply forgets this thought (“tyranny of the urgent”), i.e. does not prioritize, this is potentially a problem.
    Advantage: None.
  • Disadvantage: Blind spots in personnel planning.
    If a role is “staffed” the need is met. Whether it is fully performed is another question. So there is the risk that on the one hand the role owner thinks he has to fulfill the role “because no one else is there”. On the other hand, no one is being looked for because the role is already filled.
    Advantage: Lower personnel costs for the organization
  • Disadvantage: Perceived necessity
    The perceived necessity, combined with the difficulty of recruiting suitable staff, increases the pressure on responsible, helpful staff to perform a dual role.
    Advantage: Responsible, helpful dual role holders can indulge their inclination, but run the risk of overextending themselves, making mistakes, or even dropping out altogether.
  • Disadvantage: Multitasking
    “1st rule of multitasking: Don’t” (based on the “1sr rule of scaling”): It just doesn’t work! Never – not even for women: Never!
    If you want to try it: Start a timer and write the numbers from 1-26 and the letters from A-Z alternately next to each other: So "A1", B2", and so on. Note the time at the end, start a second timer and write first only the numbers from 1-26 next to each other and below only the letters from A-Z: So "ABCD…" and then "12345…". Then stop again and compare both times.
    Double roles blur focus and force us to perform parallel tasks (“mutlitasking”) or quick switches (“task-switching”). Each switch causes additional effort to get back into the task context (“preparation effect”). The lost time and energy is missing in the task implementation.
    Advantage: None, at best a feeling of higher productivity.

Feedback
If you have any comments, ideas, suggestions or other feedback about this article, feel free to send me an email at Feedback[at]scrummastersmind.com.

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