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What are the three scrum roles?

Scrum defines three accountabilities: the product owner owns what gets built and the backlog order; the scrum master owns how the team works and removes impediments; the developers own how the work gets done and commit to the sprint. In small teams one person often holds two, which works as long as the conflicts are named.

Product owner: order, not instructions

The product owner decides priority and is accountable for value; they do not assign tasks or estimate for the team. The single most important thing they do is say no, because a backlog where everything is priority one has no product owner in practice, whatever the org chart says.

Scrum master: process, not management

The scrum master facilitates the ceremonies, protects the sprint from mid-flight scope, and removes impediments. It is not a project-manager role and it is not a promotion — its power is entirely in influence, which is why combining it with line management quietly breaks it.

Developers: how, and the commitment

The developers — everyone building the increment, not just programmers — decide how work is done, estimate it, and own the sprint commitment. Estimates imposed from outside destroy accuracy and trust simultaneously, which is why this accountability sits here and nowhere else.

Small-team reality

In a five-person startup the founder is usually the product owner, a senior engineer informally holds the scrum master role, and everyone develops. That is fine. What matters is naming the conflict out loud: when the product owner is also the loudest engineer, the backlog order and the sprint commitment need separate conversations.

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Related questions

Do we need a dedicated scrum master?

Not at small scale. What you need is someone accountable for the ceremonies happening and blockers getting cleared — a rotating facilitator works well and spreads the skill.

Can the product owner also be a developer?

Yes, commonly in startups, but be alert to the failure mode: the person who sets priority also being the person who estimates makes it very easy to under-estimate their own favourite work.

Is a project manager the same as a scrum master?

No. A project manager typically owns scope, schedule and assignment; a scrum master owns the process and removes impediments while the team owns assignment. Renaming one to the other without changing behaviour is the most common failed scrum adoption.

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