As a home-robot company grows from one Scrum Team to four Scrum Teams (app, firmware, cloud, and a hardware-integration team) all contributing to the same robot, a leader asks whether Scrum requires appointing four separate, dedicated Scrum Masters, one per team. What does the Scrum Guide actually say about the Scrum Master role at this scale?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Scaling up teams doesn't mean scaling up headcount one-to-one for every role. The Scrum Guide leaves room for a single Scrum Master to cover more than one team, so the real question isn't whether there's one per team — it's whether the person covering multiple teams can still serve each one well.
Full Explanation
The Scrum Guide describes the Scrum Master as accountable for a Scrum Team's effectiveness, and explicitly allows that accountability to extend across more than one team — nothing in the Guide fixes the ratio at one Scrum Master per team. Treating a dedicated Scrum Master per team as mandatory misreads the Guide as more prescriptive about staffing than it is; the real constraint is whether the teams the Scrum Master serves are still getting effective coaching and facilitation, not a headcount rule. Framing the role as temporary training wheels the Developers eventually absorb misunderstands it as a phase rather than an ongoing accountability — the Scrum Master's work (coaching self-management, removing impediments, upholding Scrum) doesn't expire once a team gets comfortable with the mechanics. Having one person directly manage and assign work across all four teams misapplies the role entirely: a Scrum Master serves through facilitation and influence, not command authority over what Developers do, so a program-manager-style directive stance breaks the accountability structure the Guide describes. A caveat: serving multiple teams only works while the Scrum Master can still give each team genuine attention — spread too thin across teams with heavy impediments, the service degrades even though nothing in the Guide technically forbids it. Concrete check: ask whether each of the four teams still gets regular, focused Scrum Master attention, or whether teams are going Sprints without any real coaching.