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Project Manager in Software Development Company

Last post 09:44 am May 5, 2018 by Olivier Ledru
2 replies
02:58 pm May 4, 2018

Hi all,

I am a fresh graduate taking on a role as a consultant in a software development company. My functional role would be a Project Manager. I have been doing a lot of intensive research about agile project management diving into agile manifesto (12 principles + 4 values) and how scrum is just one of the agile frameworks (xp, crystal, fdd, dsdm, kanban) After researching on various articles, pdfs, best practices, I still have some questions pertaining to agile project management (particularly in scrum) which I need professional advice with. Please hit me with your responses as well as any resources you think might be useful for me to read.

1) Moving away from the traditional waterfall approach (PMI-PMP) to the modern day agile project management (PMI-ACP), how do we go about doing the following activities:

a. Creating an 'agile' project charter (Would it be a generic document containing business case, project objectives, major deliverables, roles & responsbilities of team, stakeholders listing and assumptions?)

b. In scrum, the scrum team will decide which activities/user stories they will perform through a sprint planning meeting. In this case, how do I go about estimating a feasible overall timeline of how long the project is expected to complete across all sprints (like the traditional PM) ?

2) Based on scrum roles (SM, PO & scrum team), there is no 'project manager' and if I were to take on a project, which scenario would I be fitting into?

a. Hybrid PM (Product Owner + Project Manager)

b. PM sitting above SM, PO & scrum team

c. Hybrid PM (Scrum Master + Project Manager)

3) Assuming the client is an external organization requesting for web development services (from my company), would it be safe to assume that the PO

4) In instances where client (external organization) requests for web development services and provides a liaison point-of-contact personnel, is that person effectively the Product Owner? What if that person is not trained in scrum (user stories, story points, scrum framework) ?

 

Hope to get insights !

 

Best Regards,

Brendon.


09:10 am May 5, 2018

Hi Brendon,

here some ideas, even they more part of PMI or Project Management than Scrum. If find the PMI-PMP and the PMI-ACP useful to understand organisations and tools and techniques for scrum.

An agile project manager should support the scrum team to remove organisational impediments and promoting agile software development in the organisation. The agile project manager should support the PO and the Team to deal with the "organisational overhead" the organisational process assets, so the team and the project can build trust and the agile teams will have a better standing in the company. 

Some organisations driven by project management methods see agile team only as delivery units for software, doing something like water scrum fall, not really care about stakeholder feedback, not really updating the product backlog. As PM your job would it to help the organisation to get more agile and support the PO. Change the view from top-down to bottom up.

1 a) An agile project charter could be a short document (reducing waste ;) which gives the product owner the power to decide about what to build and the development team how to build software The organisation could additionally support the product owner with information about important stakeholder and provide an initial product vision.

b) Check Mike Cohns talk about "Advanced Topics in Agile Planning" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2r2KryYAaY ). Was really helpful for me.

2) The PMI defines the PM as the same Person as the SM. I would say it depends ;) Every scenario has some weak points. Maybe the it's more important to find somebody as PM how will life agile values as PM and then inspect and adapt.

3) I see advantages if the PO is not external from the company, but it depends if the company has somebody with the skills and mindset.

4) Train the PO and the SM should support and coach him? 

 

I hope my ideas help. 

 

Nils

 


09:44 am May 5, 2018

Hi Brendon,

Here is an excellente short video from Dave West, the PO of Scrum.org on the PM & PO roles :

https://www.scrum.org/resources/product-owner-vs-product-manager

hope it helps

Olivier


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