'Agile' Project Manager?
In software world, 'Agile' is the word you most often hear now a days when it comes to software delivery process. Agile has many approaches - Scrum, Kanban, Lean, Extreme Programming(XP), Test Driven Development(TDD). Scrum is one such Agile approach that is used to deliver complex projects in IT world. Now let me give you a brief on what Scrum is. Scrum approach assumes that you have a cross-functional, independent development teams who are self sustained to deliver the product with the help of Scrum Master and Product Owner and keeping Agile values in tact. It has its usual sprint planning sessions, daily stand-up meetings, sprint review and sprint retrospective meetings in a time boxed sprint. Unlike the traditional waterfall model where the output or the end product is possibly visualized at the end of the process life cycle, in Scrum you get an incremental product at the end of the each sprint.
Now let us analyse if there is so called an 'Agile Project Manager' as I keep hearing this a lot. Believe me, if you are calling a project manager as 'Agile Project Manager' then you have not understood Agile based approach at all. Let us understand the origin and roles of these two. A Project Manager role is an individual who has authority over the resources, gives more weight-age to project cost or schedule, has overall project delivery as his agenda. On the contrary, Scrum Master is someone who facilitates the meetings (be it the Sprint planning or Daily scrum calls or sprint review or sprint retrospective meetings), removes the impediments for the team, coaches the team members. Scrum master is a process owner of the team and is more of a mentor who guides the already efficient development teams. Isn't there a huge difference in the responsibilities here? Even the PMI gives you PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner) for those interested in Agile approach and does not club the PMP with Agile. Answer lies in not combining these two roles together.
Let me shift the focus to the Organisation level process implementation from the project level now. Often organisations tend to look for a CMMI based process implementation. Isn't it a good way to show the customers that a certain standard is set for efficient delivery? Yes, but what has really caused the confusion is the usage of Scrum approaches in each projects with overall delivery as CMMI at the organisation level. A simple example would be Scrum does talk about unfreezed requirements, less documentation whereas waterfall model has certain standard set of documents and often talks about requirements being frozen. Now with CMMI too you are expected to show a certain set of documents baselined. Look at the conflicts it has caused. Okay may be we have not yet evolved on how Agile approach can fit in to CMMI at the moment.
Now let us analyse if there is so called an 'Agile Project Manager' as I keep hearing this a lot. Believe me, if you are calling a project manager as 'Agile Project Manager' then you have not understood Agile based approach at all. Let us understand the origin and roles of these two. A Project Manager role is an individual who has authority over the resources, gives more weight-age to project cost or schedule, has overall project delivery as his agenda. On the contrary, Scrum Master is someone who facilitates the meetings (be it the Sprint planning or Daily scrum calls or sprint review or sprint retrospective meetings), removes the impediments for the team, coaches the team members. Scrum master is a process owner of the team and is more of a mentor who guides the already efficient development teams. Isn't there a huge difference in the responsibilities here? Even the PMI gives you PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner) for those interested in Agile approach and does not club the PMP with Agile. Answer lies in not combining these two roles together.
Let me shift the focus to the Organisation level process implementation from the project level now. Often organisations tend to look for a CMMI based process implementation. Isn't it a good way to show the customers that a certain standard is set for efficient delivery? Yes, but what has really caused the confusion is the usage of Scrum approaches in each projects with overall delivery as CMMI at the organisation level. A simple example would be Scrum does talk about unfreezed requirements, less documentation whereas waterfall model has certain standard set of documents and often talks about requirements being frozen. Now with CMMI too you are expected to show a certain set of documents baselined. Look at the conflicts it has caused. Okay may be we have not yet evolved on how Agile approach can fit in to CMMI at the moment.
Process improvement is a continuous journey and I see ScrumAlliance.org has many articles which talk about how Scrum practices go along with CMMI.
Read these -
Implementing Scrum (Agile) and CMMI Together
Agile and CMMI: Better Together
I would like to say the articles are good but a new formal matured process model defined by a collaborative approach between the institutes Carnegie Mellon-SEI and ScrumAlliance might help us. With the solution approach in my mind, the new collaborative process model, 'ACMMI', as I would like to call it for Scrum approached for development based projects(ACMMI-DEV) and Kanban approach for Service based projects(ACMMI-SVC). Hope it evolves at the earliest.
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