Scrum and Project Management
Hello,
I'm starting my career in Project Management this year, working on a software house that uses SCRUM as it's development metodology. Working day by day and seeing scrum being applied got me thinking: how can we apply project management ideas and processes in a company that uses scrum, or any other agile method?
By definition, agile methodology is against some of the basic principles of PM, like documenting, planning (way) ahead, little change management, etc.
Have anyone already seen a case like this? Can anyone share ideas and experiences please?
Sorry in advance for any mistake in my text,english is not my primary language and it has been a lot of time since i used it.
Cheers
The question is not "How", but "Why" do you want to apply project management ideas (PMI? ;) )
Did you face any issues where you think they can improve something, or is it for your career?
Generally the idea of Scrum is to deliver business value frequently in short iterations.
Success is measured against this goal.
If the team finds room for improvement and identifies a project management idea that might help, they can decide to make an experiment to find out if it improves the success.
But don't start to measure success in product development by classic project management measures (Plan executed in terms of Scope, Time, Budget). The term "earned value analysis" from PMI for example is highly misleading, because you analyse the time spent and not the value earned.
> how can we apply project management ideas
> and processes in a company that uses
> scrum, or any other agile method?
In an agile enterprise the role of management must change. Rather than applying existing ideas and processes, managers need to become executive sponsors for the new agile transformation. In Scrum this includes a shift in organizational focus from "project management" to the product, and the ongoing delivery of product value.
By definition, agile methodology is against some of the basic principles of PM, like documenting, planning (way) ahead, little change management, etc.
Agile (and Scrum) is not against documentation, but raise a question is this provides any business value.
From Agile Manifesto:
"Working software over comprehensive documentation"
*OVER* documentation. Not "f*ck documents" ;-)
If PO sees the value in the documentation, that's fine.
"Scrum is a framework for developing and sustaining complex products", but it's not cover many business aspects (like opening/closing a project), which still are vital and have to be secured. And that's the space for project management, which has to be redefined as Ian said.
BR,
Bartek
Thank you all for replying!
Indeed, after studying more and reading what you guys had to say i've come to a best understanding about how i will use the principles of scrum and classic PM. For starters, i'm planning on ditching the waterfall planing in favor of iterations, and to stop using days to estimate time of tasks in favor of using sprint as measure.