Tuesday 30 September 2014

What is the role of the Project Manager (PM) in Agile? - (part 1 of 3)


It all started because of a frustrating day which included numerous demonstrations of wasted tima and effort for reasons I have not been able to understand. So I posted a message on twitter (140 characters ideally suit me as an introvert) and the respondents challenged me to write more about it. Here it is but it is split in 3 posts. First of all because it is taking me a long time to finish the 3rd answer (I somehow manage to always get quite busy) and also because I just don't like long blog posts (see above).

So here it goes... I decided to answer this question because I have seen it being asked so many times and because I was beginning to feel frustrated not only with the answers I was reading about but also with what I was able to witness in several of organisations and departments. So I decided to share my answers and perhaps next time someone asks the same question I can point people to my opinion (which I hopefully would have validated by then).

My intention is to provide 3 slightly different answers. This blog post has only the first answer which I called 

The short answer

If you don’t have the time or strength to read through the rest of the blog posts I offer you my short answer now so you can go elsewhere and do something you would appreciate more than reading my blog.

The role of the Project manager in Agile is “None”; not required; doesn't exist. 

And if it exists in a context then a big part of Agile is probably not implemented , ignored, tweaked and so on. I am all about the context and local changes, etc.. however some changes or rather practices implemented without others most probably would make insignificant ot no differerence at all. That's it. if you agree or disagree - feel free to find me on twitter.


If you however think this short answer is not good enough then read on…

Part #2 is coming soon...

I am collecting scrum teams' sprint numbers for a study - can you help?

Scrum Teams' Sprint data 

I am collecting data from scrum teams for a study.
While the data could vary (I don't expect you to process it for me), I'd need the following to be available: 
  • points committed per sprint 
  • points achieved per sprint
  • iteration length
  • total points in the backlog at the end of the sprint
If you can help do get in touch with me. Either DM me on twitter (@plamenb) or send me a message: plamen [at] leavewizard.com

I shall endeavour to notify you when I publish the results of my study.