Ask an Agilista
How Does a PM and SM coexist?
May 17, 2010
Dear Agilista,
I read your book to get a better feel of the responsibilities of a project manager in an agile framework. It was very helpful and well presented. I do understand how the project manager needs to adapt, but I must say that I still have a hard time seeing the added value of a project manager in a Scrum team. It seems like a lot of the project manager’s responsibilities in a Scrum team are the ScrumMaster’s. Where I do see some value for the project manager is mainly with the governance reporting status and numbers (financials), but I have a hard time seeing where the PM could be useful.
In your experience, how do the project manager and ScrumMaster coexist in the same project? Do they agree from the onset of the project on their respective responsibilities? Or is the project big enough that they can share some of the responsibilities? What is the ideal set-up?
Thank you very much for your help.
- Josée
Dear Josée,
As I stated in a previous post “Can PMs become CSMs?” project managers often become ScrumMasters. And as you’ve already noted, having both PMs and SMs can be overkill. PMs tend to be superfluous when ScrumMasters are present on 1-2 team projects.
But say your project has five teams, each with its own SM. These SMs are going to be busy coordinating with each other, coordinating cross-team dependencies, and removing impediments, as well as coaching their teams. Here’s where a project manager can be quite helpful. The PM can focus on the bigger picture, and help remove the obstacles the SMs bring to him/her. A typical day might include:
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- Attending the Scrum of Scrums to see how s/he might assist the SMs
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- Working with HR to hire a sixth team for the project
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- Working with Procurement to bring in a couple of contractors and purchase another 30 licenses for tools x, y, and z
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- Preparing financial and status reports for management
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- Arranging meetings with corporate committees (architectural, legal, internal audit, external IV&V) to make sure all governance issues have been covered by the teams and/or to gather governance requirements to share with the teams
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- Additional communications work to promote the teams, drive corporate strategic change efforts that will result in better support for the teams, participate in a core Agile Enablement team tasked with company-wide agile transitioning, etc.
I don’t know that there is an ideal set-up – just arrangements that make sense for the teams, divisions, and companies involved.
What worked for you, dear reader? Josée and I welcome your comments and suggestions.
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