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Agile and the Project Manager

Where is my WBS? Who un-installed Microsoft Project?

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Learning Outcomes

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1. Describe some differences between

Traditional & Agile PMs

2. Describe differences between the PM

deliverables

3. 7 Traits for an Agile PM

4. And one more thing….

Agile PM

Traditional Project Management manages the known,

Agile Project Management manages the unknown

There are distinctly different ways how you manage the unknown versus the known

There are distinctly different people and styles that are

more suited to managing the unknown versus the known

Traditional PM tendencies

Detail Oriented

Manages the details

Manages the Plan

Doesn’t prefer change

Guardian Temperament

Agile PM tendencies

Encourages Change

Comfortable with Ambiguity

Comfortable with Delegation, Trust

Manages Value

Idealist Temperament

Idealist

These are big picture people who lead followers to pursue

great dreams. They thrive on people issues and gravitate

toward the soft skills: conflict resolution, negotiation,

team building, facilitating.

Diplomacy and strategy are their strong suits

Guardian

People with this temperament like to play by a set of rules.

These are the stabilizers in the organization, working to

keep the boat on an even keel.

Meeting budgets and deadlines and following the plan are

important to Guardians.

The Difference

In waterfall projects you focus on managing people and

tasks, in Agile projects you focus on leading the process

Facilitate decision making versus making the decisions

Deliverable differences

Traditional Agile

Work Breakdown Structure Priorized Backlog

Weekly Status Reports Daily Stand ups

Project Plan Iteration Plan

MS Project Stickies

Problem Solver Problem Solver Assistant

Text Reports Visual Boards

7 Key Traits

Cross Functional

Relationship Builder

Encourages Innovation

Comfortable with ambiguity

Facilitator

Prefers to collaborate

Provide visibility, not status

Cross Functional

Ideally an Agile PM will also play other roles on the project

as well

Analyst

Developer

Tester

Equal team member

Relationship Builder

On a Traditional Project, the Analysts usually own the

relationship with the business

On an Agile Project, the Analysts still have a strong relationship, but the Agile PM needs to also build a strong

relationship to allow them to help to promote value

To do this they need to understand the solution

Encourages Innovation

As an Agile Team member and leader, the Project

Manager need to encourage the team to innovate

This may cause more change, but also more value

One of the ways this is done is by ensuring

Retrospectives as held

And ensuring those retrospectives value innovation

Comfortable with Ambiguity

The Agile PM must be comfortable with ambiguity and

vagueness

The Agile PM must be comfortable with not having a detailed plan or solution up front

Facilitator

The Agile Project Manager does not have a position of

authority

As a consequence, they must excel at facilitating decisions with the client and between team mates

Prefers to Collaborate

An Agile PM, like all Agile team members, must prefer to

collaborate.

Even when this collaboration is not required. This is done because the PM believes that better solutions will arise.

Not because they have to

Provides Visibility, not status

Instead of preparing status reports to communicate

status, the Agile PM creates an environments that

provides total visibility to the status of the project for all

to see

Kanban Boards, Visual Charts, User Story Maps

And one more thing

• Underpinning everything we have discussed is respect for

people

• Some words that seem wrong to use:

- Resources

- Software Factory

- Probably others…

• Agile Project Management is all about helping to maximize

velocity, minimize waste, and respecting every individual

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Agile Prime Directive

"Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly

believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what

they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources

available, and the situation at hand.“

--Norm Kerth, Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team

Reviews

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Final Thought

• "In traditional projects the team works for the PM to achieve

the PM's goals, in agile projects the PM works for the team

to achieve the team's goals"

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Summary

An Agile Project Manager is a different role and set of skills

that a traditional PM

Usually it helps if the Agile PM has a base competency in another skill set on the project as well

Many of the traditional PM characteristics are still required,

but these Agile characteristics are important to have in

addition

Agile is a Direction

Individuals and Processes and Interactions Tools

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Working Comprehensive software documentation

Customer Contract Collaboration Negotiation

Responding Following to change a plan