Why do Scrum teams have a Project Manager?
By: A Product Owner With A Pen
Tags: Project Management, Software Development, Product Owner, Agile, Scrum

It was always a big question mark in my head if a Scrum project is really a project or something else and why do many Scrum projects have dedicated Project Managers. I tried to read around a little and I found Myth: You Can’t Do Projects With Scrum on Scrum.org, it has some interesting thoughts but instead of going deeper, it just says that Scrum projects are projects, but no they are not really. So let’s just try to figure out together what the hell is going on here. I will consider first that Scrum projects aren’t projects.

If Scrum projects are not projects then how would you call them?

I spent an hour and a half under the shower today to figure out if there is any way to avoid using the word “project”. A Scrum team sounds good, but it rather refers to a set of people and not to an activity. Scrum product neither defines an activity nor a set of people. Development Team does not tell anything either. I tried to combine “team”, “product” and “Scrum” with anything I could find but I gave up. I even use the term “Scrum project” often myself, I can’t really express what I’m doing if I don’t say “I’m in a Scrum project”.

If Scrum projects are projects, how would you define them?

My reasoning so far is that a Scrum project must be a project because you can’t call it anything else. But is there a definition somewhere? The article I mentioned above says the following:

In our work, we notice that people tend to define projects as long-running activities where 1) the scope of what needs to be delivered, 2) the budget to make this happen and 3) the date when it needs to be delivered are all fixed. Other characteristics that people often mention is that a 4) projects only deliver at the end and that they 5) can last forever. Interestingly, the Project Management Institute (PMI) defines a project as “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result”. Wikipedia defines it as “Any undertaking, carried out individually or collaboratively and possibly involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim”. Neither definition fixes scope, budget, and deadline. Neither specifies that something is only delivered at the end or that they last forever. So we seem to be talking about different things.

The Scrum Guide also says:

Each Sprint may be considered a project with no more than a one-month horizon. Like projects, Sprints are used to accomplish something.

I don’t want to deep dive into philosophy but my interpretation is that a Scrum project is a project, because it is using people and resources to deliver an output, so I agree with the definitions of PMI and Wikipedia, but I also agree that a Scrum sprint can be also considered as a project too.

So a Scrum project is a project, sprints are projects too, but is there a Project Manager?

No. And this is where misinterpretations start and this is why many Scrum projects are implemented falsely. I see two difficulties here, one is the misinterpretation of the customer and the other is the misinterpretation (and denial) of the organization.

First of all if an IT company develops software for other companies, the customers don’t really know what Scrum is and how does it work. They have one simple wish: “I want to speak to the Project Manager” and they expect you to say that it’s you or to get the name and phone number of the responsible person. At the beginning I always started explaining that there is no Project Manager in Scrum, I’m a Product Owner and there’s a Scrum Master as well, but after every attempt all I ever got was uncomfortable silence, then I was asked again who the Project Manager is. Customers want and need a Project Manager because that’s what they understand and that’s what provides them a sense of comfort and safety.

The other thing is that traditional IT companies are project organizations and not product organizations, we work on projects of products and each project must have a responsible Project Manager who has the legal right to sign contracts, takes care of the numbers and manages the required resources. In a project organization you just can’t have a Scrum project without a dedicated Project Manager, moreover as I said before the customer demands to have a Project Manager, so you must have a Project Manager or the world goes upside down, the earth will crack under our feet and we will all fall into the burning fire and we all gonna die. So we must have a dedicated Project Manager!

“We have no choice but to have a Project Manager” is an excuse

Let’s just consider something new. All I wrote before was from a project point of view. If you can only think within the limits of the project mindset, your universe will also become very limited. If you can only approach Scrum from a project perspective, you have no choice but to have a Project Manager, or your little universe will fall apart. From Scrum perspective things look a bit different.

Project Manager as a whole does not exist in Scrum

The roles and responsibilities of a Project Manager have been distributed between the Product Owner, the Scrum Master and the Development Team. That’s the whole point of Scrum, a team can only be self-organizing if all team members have management capabilities. Because we want our team to be self-organizing, there is no need for a Project Manager and there is no 1-to-1 mapping. Each and every Scrum role assume some tasks and skills of a Project Manager, but they also assume other skills, knowledge and experience what a Project Manager does not necessarily have.

Should we just fire every Project Manager?

It is vital to understand the self-organizing Scrum teams are the exact opposite of classical top-down project teams, even if the customer demands, one should stay consistent and consequent, the contact points are the Scrum Master and the Product Owner. Project Managers do not need to be fired, but they should have appropriate knowledge and experience to assume a role in a scrum team. It’s an organization’s responsibility to educate the Project Managers and support them to have the necessary certifications, not just because everybody have them, but to create a basic common understanding. Once a Project Manager has the basic knowledge, one can decide if one wants to be a Product Owner or a Scrum Master, the only thing what never worked and will never work is to say that “you will be a Scrum Master from tomorrow, good luck”. Make sure everybody has the proper knowledge and understanding so they can work according to their roles.

Final thought: be supportive

I think that changing from classical projects to Scrum projects can be pretty stressful for everybody, because it challenges the status-quo and one’s position and authority within an organization. I’m pretty sure that lot of people feel it as a setback or degrading when one must sacrifice his position as a Project Manager, which is well-recognized and established profession and career to become something vague and fishy what called Scrum Master just to follow the newest hypes and trends. People may feel that their dignity and reputation is in question and that they are both being attacked as a loyal employee and both as a person, and this needs to be taken very seriously. If you don’t deal with the affected people individually and with respect, you will only face with resistance. This topic surely deserves a few separate articles.

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