Project management responsibilities on a scrum team
It is incorrect to assume that the scrum master is just the ” agile project manager”.
Although the two roles have similarities such as impediment removal, being a servant-leader significantly differentiates this role from the more command and control-focused project manager.
The best way to understand why a project manager ads real value, is to first consider the traditional project management responsibilities:
I see these responsibilities as important and need to be addressed – who oversees these activities if there is no Project Manager?
Let’s look at those responsibilities again, but this time in the context of a scrum project:
This opens several options, for a start, a person who was a project manager might assume any of the three scrum roles (product owner, scrum master, or development team). This will depend of course upon a project manager having the right skills and desire.
Most project managers will make excellent Scrum Masters providing they can let go of the traditional command and control management approach. What the diagram above reveals is that the Product Owner assumes at least as many project management responsibilities as the Scrum Master. You can see that the product owner also assumes at least as many project management responsibilities as the scrum master.
This shows that a project manager may also transition into the role of Product Owner. Of course, they need to have the proper domain knowledge and other skills to execute the Product Owner role.
Occasionally, a project manager with the technical background might choose to become a member of the development team.
Organizations that have large and complex development efforts may use the project manager when the logistics and coordination of tasks are so overwhelming that the teams cannot be expected to keep up with them.
Assuming a project manager is needed here they would be expected to have the whole system perspective and to work diligently with other roles and resources within the organization.
There might be some contractors, internal non-scrum teams and other internal organizations associated with delivering the product. The logistics of dealing with some contractors or suppliers can be quite involved and time consuming.
Here again the project manager will play a pivotal role.
Be clear, rather than being in charge, the project manager is the person who is concerned with making sure that dependencies across the various organizational areas are understood and communicated so that the teams can most effectively coordinate their own work.
Bringing everything together
It should be clear to you that although we first discussed typical management roles, such as operational managers, all those elements need to be managed or at least communicated with by a single individual within the scrum team.
According to pure scrum, the product owner along with the scrum master are supposed to have all the skills, knowledge and expertise to carry these out.
However, another solution as my diagram above suggests, is to sit down and agreed at the start of a scrum project, how the roles and responsibilities may be shared among traditional scrum roles and the project manager.
It is a widely held view that most organizations have difficulty in finding an individual who has all look of these talents! The missing link here is the project manager. The following Venn diagram illustrates this point perfectly:
Although as I have said, the project manager may fulfill one or both, of the Product Owner and Scrum Master roles.
So, you are currently a project manager, and most likely you can see that the Product Owner is likely to come from a business and sales and marketing background – most likely in charge of a product sector.
But what about the Scrum Master?
For a start, it is not necessary to become trained as a certified Scrum Master (but it is good to have the qualification!). I hope I have given you some fresh ideas about the importance of the project manager within scrum projects.
