Project Managers with experience know that the traditional ways of doing PM are not sufficient any more for all our project situations. You need more tricks up your sleeve to pull it all off. That’s why I follow eagerly the techniques that are coming from the agile PM camp. But I have a hard time integrating them with my own views, at least in the ways they are expressed by practitioners. Glenn Alleman provided me with the final “aha” I needed in this direction in his posting : Agile PM is not discussing project management as such, but more the management of software development using agile processes (where the agile-part is in software development).
He raises some very interesting issues I agree with. Software development can be a part of a project, but a project always has a broader scope of activities, so limiting yourself to only development leaves out some aspects. And before we go this way, let me just start now 
: yes, it is important for a PM to know software development practices. Not to perform them personally, but to be able to communicate intelligent about the subject: “where are the risks, is he or she bullshitting me… ?”
It might seem that we are splitting hairs here. Perhaps we are, but it is important in my opinion, even if it is just a mental exercise for a Project Manager to think about what his profession is all about (see WTF: Project Management Theories?). In the decade that lies before us, change is the only constant factor, you are not going to make it as a PM being just from whatever camp you might think of. It is not a discussion about “agile or plan-driven” it is “agile and plan-driven and everything in between”.
But I love the term “agile”… and we can use it properly for PM:
If you are talking about “agile project managers”, this would be the key aspect of my definition. A project manager that has a lot of mental models about projects available, and can adopt his mindset according the situation without problems, is what I call a true “agile” PM. As with any social situation, a group of interacting stakeholders is a very complex system. You are never going to come up with one this-size-fits-all model that is usable. The only shot PMs have is being fluent in more than one mental model. (my posting)
Perhaps I should coin the term Resilient Project Management.
One Comment
Hi,
Interesting opinion and I main agree.
As you know, Scrum is currently the mostly used Agile development framework. It focuses on team organization (self-organization actually) rather then on precise Engineering practises. In the basic Scrum training (Certified Scrum Master), we learn that project managers do not exist in Scrum.
Their role and responsibilities are spread between the self-organizing development team, the Scrum Master and the Product Owner.
Therefore, the Project Manager of Scrum projects should just accept that he is not a project manager anymore and embrace his new role which is more likely to become a Scrum Master or a Product Owner depending of his skills and affinities. It is a tough change.
Therefore, in real Agile/Scrum development organizations, project management is present, effective and efficient but clearly implicit since the Project Manager as a role itself should just not exist.
It is much more simple and honest to define new roles then try to recycle an old one.
Julien.
One Trackback
[...] Agile PM Is Not Project Management Project Managers with experience know that the traditional ways of doing PM are not sufficient any m… [...]