Remote teams - two Scrum Masters?

Hi,

I have a question. In my company we are working with remote teams.

The development is done in one country, the strategic part in our country and sometimes the client is also in another country. We are already trying to work Scrum since 3 years.

In the beginning the Project manager was also the Scrum master, facilitating meetings, coaching the team and supporting the Product Owner. This worked ok, although it took up a lot of the time of the Project manager. But the good thing was that most scrum masters really tried to coach the team, also the remote team, to become more self organised. There was trust, transparency and overall the process and roles were clear for everyone.

Now the company has decided to install te Scrum master at the location of the development team. This is of course good for the development team. But now we face some other challenges. The Scrum masters are for the most part only facilitating and arranging things for the development team. But now it is harder for the few developers in our country to connect with them. Also they have less experience with coaching the entire scrum team and supporting the product owner (this might also be a cultural thing, they are still very hierarchical so they really need the self-organising and open communication part).

Is it an option to install 2 Scrum masters. One with the remote team and one over here? So that the scrum master over here can do the teaching and coaching of the whole team (working together with the other scrum master) and support of the part of the team over here and the support of the product owner and stakeholders.

Or is it better to have 1 Scrum master and get an Agile coach to coach the entire team at once? Although I expect it to be difficult to train the remote Scrum master to improve his Agile skills because of the distance.

Thanks already for your input!