How Is the Scrum Master’s Role Different From a Project Manager Role
Project manager and Scrum Master are different profiles, but do they really have different responsibilities and authorities? There are key differences, and this article elaborates the fine differences between them.
The responsibilities of a project manager summarized as follows:
- Taking care of the project scope and deliverables, budget and costs, and schedule and timelines;
- Keeping a check so that a quality product is delivered as per the project’s goals and objectives;
- Proactively finding and managing risks;
- Solving problems and managing issues;
- Developing a work breakdown structure and assigning tasks;
- Prioritising requirements and then scheduling them;
- Monitoring and reporting of project progress;
- Engaging stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle;
- Managing interdependencies between teams;
- Effective communication, internally and externally to all stakeholder levels; and compliance with company’s policies and procedures.
- Ensure 360 degree feedback from team members
The responsibilities of a Scrum Master can be summarized as follows:
- Eliminate the barriers between the Product Owner and development so that the Product Owner directly leads to development.
- Guide the Product Owner how to improve ROI and cater his or her goals through Scrum.
- Heighten the development team lives by facilitating empowerment and creativity.
Increase the productivity of the development team in every possible way. - Enhance the engineering practices and tools so that each increment of functionality is shippable potentially.
- Stay updated with the team’s progress and make it visible to all parties.
Scrum Master vs. Project Manager-Guiding the Project Manager Role in Scrum
There are some differences between the Scrum Master and the Project Manager in an Agile environment. In an agile environment of a Scrum Master and Project Manager, both become accountable for any failures or success; therefore, people wonder if the project manager role is unwanted one. There has been a debate for a long time in an agile community in regard to the role of a project manager. In reality, the Scrum Master and the Project Manager role are two different titles; don’t forget, the principle behind Scrum is supposed to move from the traditional way of delivering software.
The project manager is in charge of traditional project management, he/she is solely responsible for making decisions to prevent any failures. The one who is accountable, when things go wrong, he/she ensures that project requirements are being accomplished. In this consideration, we can say the Product Owner role has some similarities with the Project Manager role (opposite to the Scrum Master role). The Project Manager may make decisions and derives the solution, but a Scrum best practice explains that the Scrum Master is a facilitator; he/she is not likely to make decision actions and gives answers to problems.
Project Managers usually see themselves as advocates of the traditional ways of performing operations; however, the fact that project managers help in their organisation’s transition to Scrum are an important asset for the organisation. As the traditional project manager role gets distributed amongst product development team members, the Scrum Master, and the product owner during the agile implementation, most project managers often feel alienated from the team. Due to this feeling of displacement, most project managers are not in favor of the Agile movement. Does it mean the project manager role is no more alive in a Scrum environment? The answer is – not completely.
The project manager role is influential – over the people, project, and processes. A project manager in an agile environment has major responsibilities to complete during the development of a training program. The training program is important for the rapid acceptance and alignment of the Scrum Methodology. The project manager may decide to provide the training on his own or hire external trainers to give the training.
During the scrum adoption process by an organisation, the responsibility of the project manager is to make sure that members of Scrum teams do not deviate from the practice because of a temptation to revert to old habits. He/She needs to point out offending team members because Scrum needs constant improvement and learning is an active part of it. Not only is scrum master responsible for Scrum motivations, but HR staff are also responsible to help become agile. While continuing with services that HR should provide, an HR partner should be responsive to the ongoing changes in the culture and work style so that others in an organisation can learn to support agile working.
Although the product owner, and somewhere the product team, are responsible for tasks related to the project itself, the project manager may help during reporting and compliance issues. The project manager must ensure that the members stay compliant with industry standards, especially the ones associated with data security. He/she should carry out a compliance audit on the team in question with special attention to risk identification and analysis.
Bottom line: The ScrumMaster does not remove the project manager role. Both of these roles need to coexist based on the organisational boundaries, regulatory nature, and involved complexities. In case they merge, then a conscientious evaluation is vital. To be a certified ScrumMaster, you can even do certification, for example, Agile and Scrum certification and can set benchmarks in your respective industry.
Related Articles
