- One Title, Many Roles
- Key Skills of Project Managers
- Qualities of Successful Project Managers
- 15 Common Mistakes of Project Managers
- Project Manager Versus Scrum Master Versus Product Owner
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Project Manager Versus Scrum Master Versus Product Owner
With the increasing adoption of agile project approaches, and the Scrum agile methodology in particular, there is often some initial confusion about how a Project Manager fits in this environment, since the Scrum methodology does not define a Project Manager role. And frankly, many organizations struggle to figure out how to leverage their existing project managers as they transition to agile and Scrum project approaches. Often, it is this struggle that leads to the confusion and the uncertainty surrounding the Project Manager role.
In summary, once you understand the role of the Scrum Master, the Product Owner, and the Project Manager, it’s much easier to see the importance of each role and why they are all needed for a successful agile Scrum project.
Let’s briefly discuss each role to jump-start this understanding:
Scrum Master—A defined Scrum Guide role that is focused on the core team and guiding them through the Scrum process. The Scrum Master is both a coach and a facilitator for the development team, the Product Owner, and often the organization. This role is focused on the work process, alleviating bottlenecks and continuously striving for process improvement.
Product Owner—A defined Scrum Guide role that is focused on maximizing the value of the product being delivered. The Product Owner is responsible for defining the backlog items (for example, requirements and features), setting priorities, and providing feedback to the core development team after each sprint (work increment).
Project Manager—Serves as overall leader and manager of the project itself. This role works with the Scrum Master and Product Owner to ensure that the needs of the organization and business are being met. The Project Manager is responsible for delivering the project on time, within budget, and within the agreed-upon scope. In addition, the Project Manager handles building the team, securing the budget, development and maintenance of project schedules, delivering project communications, managing project issues and risks, and coordinating release deployments.
Seems fairly straightforward, right? So where does the confusion come into play? In my experience, the confusion stems from one, if not all, of these factors:
Some of the traditional Project Manager functions are shared by the Scrum Master and the Product Owner.
The Scrum Master and/or Product Owner roles have not been properly staffed and/or individuals lack the requisite Scrum training.
A single individual is serving a combination of these roles.
Is it possible for a single person to serve a combination of these roles? Sure, but it does run the risk of highly compromising the Scrum process. The most common scenario that can be successful is one in which the Project Manager also serves as the Scrum Master, but this does assume the Project Manager has the appropriate skills, training, and time to serve both roles properly. In general, the more aligned the organization is with the Scrum agile roles, and the more mature an organization becomes with successfully leveraging the Scrum approach, the clearer the differences and the importance of each of these roles become.
The map in Figure 2.1 summarizes the main points we reviewed in this chapter.
)
FIGURE 2.1 Project manager overview.