The other day, I received a mail from one participants of an introductory class on Scrum:

I am working as a development team member. We are looking for a ScrumMaster, and I want to take on this role. I agreed with my boss that I still need to contribute as a team member, and therefore will work 50% as ScrumMaster, and 50% as development team member.

While thinking this through, I got some concerns. I think it’s not a wise idea to become the ScrumMaster for the team that I am also developing in. What are your thoughts?

As an alternative we have a closely related team. I could work as a ScrumMaster there, and their ScrumMaster joins our development team. What do you think about such a solution?

Since I run into this type of question often, I found I should publish my thoughts on it for future reference.