The city housing-voucher program considers cutting the Scrum Master and letting the Product Owner run standups and retrospectives. Why is that a poor substitute?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
The Product Owner already has a full-time job: what voucher work is worth doing. The Team Coach's job is how the team works together. Combining those hats looks cheap and usually starves coaching.
Full Explanation
Cutting the Scrum Master on a city housing-voucher program and letting the Product Owner run standups and retrospectives is a poor substitute because a dedicated Team Coach focuses on coaching and self-management, which is distinct from Product Owner content leadership. The PO already has a full-time job deciding what voucher work is worth doing; combining hats usually starves process coaching and weakens both roles for applicants waiting on housing services.
Claiming the Product Owner already owns team-process coaching fails because SAFe separates content leadership from SM/TC coaching accountability; cutting the coach is not the Framework default. Saying standups and retrospectives are RTE events fails because those are team events, not train events the PO is barred from touching for the wrong reason. Having the Scrum Master write the voucher backlog while the PO facilitates fails because it is the same role collapse in reverse.
Exam caveat: small teams sometimes share capacity pragmatically, but "PO facilitates everything" as a cost cut is not advanced practice and typically erodes Inspect and Adapt. Operational check: restore dedicated coaching focus for team sync and retrospective quality, keep the PO on backlog value and acceptance, measure whether voucher-team improvement experiments actually happen, and revisit staffing only after coaching outcomes are healthy—not before.