Scrum and fairytale characters

I was discussing with a friend of mine let’s call him Arto last week. Arto had a worry that scrum introduces fairytale characters to organisations. E.g. Product owner who really cares about what she is developing and is able to understand the whole product domain in so detail level that if team asks her to clarify some small detail in acceptance test she is able to do that.Then we have scrum master a person who understand scrum so deeply that she is able to teach the whole organisation how to do scrum and is also able to remove all obstacles from the way so that the team can perform. And of course a team that is able to deliver working SW after each sprint.

I first agreed with Arto but then I started to think what kind of persons are needed to build successful products. Scrum introduces role descriptions with high standard and to create successful products you actually need person that fit to scrum role descriptions. Now when organisation does not have such person available scrum works as it has been intended it makes the problems visible.

How organisation deal with this shows bigger dysfunctions in at whole company level. E.g. If a company has tradition to solve problems by appointing managers to solve them we soon end up having managers called scrum of scrum manager who’s responsibility is to solve communication problems between teams.

To wrap up in my opinion scrum does not introduce fairytale figures to organisation instead it sets highstandards for people that participate to product development andmakes the current situation painfully visible.