traditional Project Manager's role transition in Agile Methodology

The article is meant to investigate the possible transition for the traditional project manager who would like to continue working closely to the team in a company who adopts the agile framework. Potential transition for the traditional project manager role As companies transition to using agile methodologies, many project managers struggle with finding their place in the new environment. The traditional role of a project manager is a very structured one. The project manager is a decision maker, a leader, a planner and someone who is considered accountable for the success of the project^[1]. Although there is no role equivalent in the agile environment, a project manager can make a transition depending on his strongest skills and aspirations. Most of the project managers would probably transition to the role of Scrum Master. In order to transit to the role of Scrum Master a project manager needs to have strong soft skills and enjoy working closely to the team. That means being a good communicator, facilitator and motivator, in one word- a team builder.

The main difference between the two methods is the way the work gets done, following the “waterfall” or the “agile” model. Both terms, waterfall and agile, are referred to as “product- oriented processes”^[2] . Following the waterfall model, the requirements of a product are elaborated phase by phase in sequential order (concept, design, development, testing). Whereas according to the agile method the work gets done in iterative cycles delivering small increments^[3] of “functioning” product at the end of every iteration.

Traditional Project Management	Agile Methodology
Waterfall model	Iterative model (sprints)
Command and Control leadership	Servant leadership and self-organizing teams
Functional teams	Cross- functional teams
Heavy up front analysis and planning	Daily stand- up meetings
One time release	Frequent small releases "Incremental delivery"
Structured and heavily documented	Adaptable
Well- defined milestones	Test driven development

The traditional role of project manager covers wide range responsibilities: task assignment, balancing between the three constraints (scope, schedule and cost), communication, quality and risk management and many more. So, the reason this role becomes obsolete in an agile environment is because those responsibilities are redistributed between the self- organizing team, the product owner and the scrum master^[4] .

A self-organizing team is a cross- functional highly motivated group of individuals, usually 7 to 10, who work together toward a common goal. The main characteristic of a collocated team is it being composed of different profiles of professionals, capable to deliver a completed product by actively participating in the product creation from the beginning to the end. After the initial collaboration with the product owner on the definition and estimation of the product requirements (deliverables),the team members pull tasks form the backlog and have daily stand up meetings to make decisions about work to be done, delivery, re-estimation and rework^[5] . That is how the project manager's responsibilities of task assigning, communicating, quality management and day to day decision making gets redirected to the team.

The product owner, being the liaison^[6] between the stakeholders and the development team, takes on the traditional project manager's responsibilities of negotiation scope and schedule tradeoff and strong communication with all the interested parties. Moreover, one of his main responsibilities is to have vision of what needs to be done and to clearly convey that vision to the team^[7] . Therefore the persona occupying this role has to be business savvy and have strong communication skills. Although the product owner prioritizes the product backlog he does not assign tasks to the team. The product owner’s job is to maximize the value of the product and the work of the development team. That is achieved by making sure that the product backlog is understandable and transparent for the developing team^[8] .

The Scrum master is a facilitative leader who makes sure that the team members adhere to the Scrum process, removes impediments and gets the team to perform to its fullest capacity. That entails being a process expert, meeting facilitator and protector of the team but it does not include the traditional project manager responsibilities such as managing scope, cost and risk.

In Scrum agile methodology, the Scrum Master is often referred to as the servant leader. This means that he has authority which has been granted to him by the developing team^[10] . The Scrum Master exercises the authority over the process by making sure the backlog is in shape, the team members are following through with the tasks they picked from the backlog and that the deliverables that were set for the iteration/ sprint are being produced. At the end of the iteration the Scrum Master conducts a retrospective meeting with the team in order to collect the lessons learned and the opportunities for improvement of the process in the future iterations. As an illustration, a Scrum Master is a trainer who makes sure the trainees follow through with their goals and don't skip the difficult tasks.

The role of Scrum Master serves as a facilitator for the team and the product owner. The way the Scrum Master facilitates the team is by removing all obstacles that stand in the way for a successful attainment of the team's goals. This is achieved in multiple ways. First of all, the Scrum Master facilitates the daily stand up and the retrospective meetings by planning, moderating and post processing. Impediments that come up during a daily stand up (daily scrum) are to be fixed by the Scrum Master and if he is unable to fix them he finds someone who is. Whereas during the retrospective meeting, at the end of every iteration (sprint), the scrum master asks the team members for ideas on what they should “stop doing, start doing and continue doing”^[11] in order to improve the production process. Secondly the Scrum Master, understanding the team dynamic, takes the role of a mediator during conflict and encourages and motivates the evolution of unity of the self-organizing team. Therefore the Scrum Master must be a team player, a person who takes satisfaction helping others achieve success. A successful Scrum Master is the one who manages to create a unified high- performing team. The way the Scrum Master facilitates the job of the Product Owner is by helping him understand how to create and maintain the product backlog^[12] and communicate his vision to the development team. Furthermore, he communicates the progress of the sprint, the challenges, risks, improvements and achievements to the higher management and the rest of the interested parties.

Being a team protector is one of the Scrum Master's most important responsibilities. Trying to make sure the team does not overcommit under the pressure of the stakeholders or the product owner who represents is the most common scenario. That is because by overcommitting the product will lose on quality. Nevertheless there are times when the Scrum Master needs to protect the team from complacency, as teams tend to get self- satisfied after experiencing initial success with Scrum^[13]. So, this is the time when the Scrum Master collaborates with the Product Owner on pushing the team harder. In addition, in order to keep the team focused, the Scrum Master protects the team from being disrupted physically by requests from outsiders.

In order to keep track of administrative duties, most Scrum Masters tend to keep a checklist. The checklist covers three phases: beginning of the sprint, daily update and end of the sprint. At the beginning of a sprint, after the sprint planning meeting, the Scrum Master creates a sprint info page in the company's wiki and communicates to everyone, via mail or physical display that a new sprint has begun. He updates the sprint statistics document adding the team's velocity, size, sprint length etc. On a daily basis the Scrum Mater makes sure the daily scrum is on schedule, the impediments that emerged are resolved and the product backlog and burn-down chart are up to date. At the end of a sprint, the Scrum Master invites everyone to the sprint demo, organizes a retrospective meeting with the team and the product owner and updates the statistics document with the actual velocity and the “lessons learned” discussed during the retrospective meeting.

In order to illustrate the ways the Scrum Master helps the team, here are some scenarios: i. During a release planning meeting, the Scrum Master notices some tasks from the backlog have not been estimated, so he facilitates the estimation by asking the team questions such as “How would you estimate this task?, What is the priority of the task? Can we fit it in the first iteration?, What does “done” look like for this task? What will the demo be like?”^[15] ii. During iteration, the Scrum Master is making sure the information radiators are in order, visible and understandable for the team and the stakeholders. He also needs to make sure the team reacts to warning signs on the task board. He notices that they are running behind with the tasks according to the burn- down chart and asks the team to consider pulling out some of the tasks from the iteration^[16].

Although most project managers would probably aspire to become Scrum Masters some of them could transition to other roles such as Agile Program Manager (Scrum of Scrums) or Business Planner depending on their skills and aspirations. By choosing the former, becoming the Scrum of Scrum, a manager keeps track of the progress of all the projects included in the portfolio and does not work directly with the teams but with their Scrum Masters. When choosing the latter, usually a project manager is a tools master and business oriented and he will find a place in business case development or early business planning^[17] . It all comes down to following ones skills and affinities.