Stakeholders: Project Manager, Agile Coach, Developer

How does our project deliver the desired functionality on time and within budget? Traditionally, the project manager creates the plan, divides the work, supervises the planning, manages risks, and reports on progress. In short, the traditional project manager has the final say. It’s their project.

Traditional project managers aren’t fond of Agile:

• Waterfall works as long as we don’t allow changes. Unfortunately, changes can’t be eliminated.
• We’ve been using Waterfall for years successfully. Numerous studies show that 70 to 80 percent of all Waterfall projects fail.
• If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. That said, do our projects really deliver the desired functionality on time and within budget?
• We don’t actually use Waterfall anymore. We’ve been working with Agile. We’re not saying it isn’t true. Unfortunately, we have noticed that in many organizations where project managers make these statements, Agile is applied only in name.
• We do Scrum. We’ve almost finished the analysis and the plan of what to do in each iteration. Once the analysis is approved, we iterate on design and development. Often, these are well-intentioned project managers that think they might be using Agile but are actually applying Waterfall.

In Agile, the role of the project manager is totally different. Teams are self-organizing. The team takes responsibility for the result. It’s able to distribute and carry out the work, for example, during stand-ups. A question that project managers often ask is, “How can we ensure that everyone on the team is always working?” It’s simple. In self-organizing teams, it isn’t necessary to keep everyone working. The teams take care of this themselves. If someone has less work, they help others. This does take some getting used to for people who are new to Agile. It’s like Tom de Marco says: “Value keeping work prioritized and organized over keeping people busy.”

Where traditionally the work of the project manager is shrouded in secrecy, Agile projects usually choose transparency. That requires trust. The project manager is part of the team that participates in kickoffs and evaluations and provides input on what they’re working on during the daily stand-up, just like other team members. The Agile project manager mainly has a facilitating and organizing role:

• Creating the project plan: Every project, traditional or Agile, has the need for a project plan. It records the agreements