Tech Leads in Scrum

In many software teams using Scrum, one question often comes up. “Where does the Tech Lead fit?”

Scrum defines only three accountabilities: the Product Owner, the Scrum Master, and the Developers. There’s no mention of a Tech Lead. Yet, most modern engineering teams have one. So, how does a Tech Lead fit into a Scrum team, and how can they be effective without conflicting with the Scrum Guide?

Where does a Tech Lead fit into Scrum Teams?

Scrum’s 2020 Shift from Roles to Accountabilities

The original Scrum Guide described roles, which some teams interpreted as specific job titles. The 2020 update replaced roles with accountabilities, a subtle but important change. The intent was to focus less on formal positions and more on clear responsibilities.

In short:

  • The Product Owner (PO) is accountable for maximising the product value.
  • The Scrum Master (SM) is accountable for enabling Scrum to work and the team’s effectiveness.
  • The Developers are accountable for creating a usable increment each Sprint.

The Scrum Guide doesn’t prescribe how teams should structure themselves to fulfil these accountabilities. For example, in many organisations, a Product Manager acts as Product Owner, and an Agile Coach takes on the Scrum Master role.

If you imagine accountabilities as “badges” someone wears, any person may wear multiple badges. Scrum doesn’t require extra people. It only requires that these responsibilities be covered.

Scrum Doesn’t Define Technical Practices

Scrum is intentionally lightweight. It describes how a team works together, its rituals and expectations, but it doesn’t dictate how the team builds software. This doesn’t mean the technical practices aren’t important.

Scrum teams building software should still draw on sound engineering practices, such as continuous design, automated testing, and deployment pipelines. Since Scrum teams are made of people, technical leadership is still essential, even if Scrum doesn’t explicitly call it out.

In most Scrum teams, a Developer serves as the Tech Lead. Although both the Tech Lead and the Scrum Master care about team effectiveness, their focus and approach differ.

Scrum teams can have additional roles, like a Tech Lead. A Developer typically plays the Tech Lead role

Tech Leads vs Scrum Masters

I’ve written extensively about it here, but in short, “A Tech Lead is a software engineer responsible for leading a team and aligning its technical direction.” A Scrum Master, according to the Scrum Guide, helps the team understand and apply Scrum effectively, removes impediments, and improves collaboration.

Concretely, a Tech Lead focuses on technical alignment and engineering excellence. Both of these ensure a team can make sustainable, high-quality changes to a system. They might do this by guiding architectural decisions, championing quality and helping the team manage technical debt.

In contrast, the Scrum Master concentrates on how the team works. They facilitate ceremonies, improve collaboration, and ultimately help a team self-manage. When done well, a Scrum Master may not be an active accountability because the team can take care of everything it needs to.

Put differently:

  • The Tech Lead ensures the team builds a sustainable technical solution
  • The Scrum Master ensures the team works effectively together.

These perspectives naturally overlap, so strong teams benefit when both roles collaborate closely. 

What do Tech Leads do that Scrum Masters do not?

Within a Scrum Team, a Tech Lead might take on some or all of the following:

  • Establish a Technical Vision – Help the team understand the direction they’re moving towards as they make incremental system changes, ensuring the system remains coherent and adaptable.
  • Mentor and coach – Use their experience to develop others’ technical skills and decision-making ability.
  • Act as a product counterpart – Translate technical constraints and risks into business terms, helping to make informed trade-offs.
  • Manage quality – Encourage good engineering practices, define what “quality” means for the team, and ensure the system remains secure, performant, and scalable.
  • Act as a technical point of contact – Represent the team in discussions with other groups such as InfoSec, Operations, or Support, and align with the broader engineering community.

Of course, many of these responsibilities can be shared across the team, but the Tech Lead often stays accountable for ensuring they happen.

Making the Tech Lead Role Successful in Scrum Teams

When implemented well, the Tech Lead role strengthens a Scrum team’s ability to deliver value continuously. Here are some ways to make it successful:

  1. Act as a guide, not a gatekeeper – Encourage shared ownership of technical decisions and avoid becoming the bottleneck for approvals or architecture decisions.
  2. Collaborate closely with the Product Owner (PO) – Translate product priorities into technical impact and help the PO understand technical debt or infrastructure needs in business terms.
  3. Partner with the Scrum Master – Both roles care about team effectiveness. While the Scrum Master focuses on process flow, the Tech Lead focuses on technical flow, and both are often deeply connected.
  4. Mentor and coach the team – A great Tech Lead is a multiplier, helping others make sound technical decisions. The goal is to make your own guidance less necessary over time.
  5. Keep the team technically aligned – Ensure the team agrees on architectural direction to prevent big balls of mud and reduce accidental complexity.
  6. Focus on outcomes – Engineering exists to deliver value, not to chase novelty for its own sake.

Tech Leads Can Work Well Within Scrum

Scrum is a framework for delivering value, not a complete manual for how technical teams work. The Tech Lead role complements Scrum by strengthening the team’s technical alignment and capabilities.

When done well, a Tech Lead helps the team balance technical excellence with delivery excellence to ensure that the product and the people building it can succeed over the long term.

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