How to Thrive as a Project Manager in a Scrum Environment
How to Thrive as a Project Manager in a Scrum Environment
Project Managers are still relevant, but need to adapt their skills to complement Scrum.
As a project manager, you’re stuck in a difficult position if your company is adopting Scrum. It’s easy to question where your role fits in as Scrum teams become more autonomous. There’s also the added pressure of leaders questioning the relevance of your role as a project manager.
The truth is, organizations need project managers now more than ever! As projects are complex and often span multiple Scrum teams, there’s no one better to communicate and lead complex projects than project managers. However, the role is changing with Scrum, so you’ll need to empower yourself with new skills to add value and work effectively with Scrum teams.
Distilling the Myth: Scrum Doesn’t Need Project Managers
A common misconception is, “Project managers have no place in Scrum.” This can be daunting to hear and may make you question your career choice. However, this mindset stems from relying on rigid job titles rather than understanding what each role is accountable for.
Organizations have common accountabilities, and many of these are skills that project managers do best:
- Connecting strategic priorities
- Navigating cross-team dependencies
- Managing risks
- Supporting governance expectations
- Communicating with stakeholders
- Creating conditions for delivery success
“Instead of initiating conversations around, ‘Do PMs belong?’ a better conversation to have is, ‘Which project management behaviors help Scrum teams thrive, and which undermine agility?’ says Julie Chickering, Hyperdrive instructor for Scrum for Project Managers.
How Project Managers Influence Outcomes without Authority
While Scrum teams operate differently from traditional teams, the desired outcome remains the same—to deliver high-quality products to customers as quickly as possible.
The key difference with Scrum is that you’re no longer assigning work to team members. Work surfaces are managed through a prioritized backlog owned by the team’s product owner. While this may feel like a loss of control, getting comfortable with greater ambiguity and avoiding the nitty-gritty details will be important.
As a project manager, you’re still responsible for delivering projects on time and on budget, but your approach changes to complement the Scrum team. The team self-organizes and makes team-level decisions on how the work gets done and the day-to-day decisions around the product, but making sure you communicate timelines and budget to stakeholders stays in your wheelhouse.
Project managers really shine in Scrum organizations when multiple teams are required to deliver a project or program. Your skills in cross-team communication and stakeholder collaboration are a huge asset.
You may be wondering how you can forecast delivery without a traditional project plan. In Scrum, most teams use a visual board, making it easier than ever to see where the team is with work. Instead of having to project a delivery date months in advance, you’ll see progress every sprint, which lasts 1 to 4 weeks.
To understand priorities and what’s being delivered, you’ll want to build a strong relationship with each team’s product owner. And if there are blockers getting in the way of the team’s progress, you’ll partner with the Scrum Master to understand what’s happening. However, it’s important not to get involved with the team’s ability to solve their own problems, or you’ll find conflict starts to brew.
How the Project Manager Role Shifts with Scrum
As you evolve as a project manager, your day-to-day role changes too. Here’s how some traditional responsibilities may shift with Scrum.
| The Traditional Way | The Scrum Way |
|---|---|
| A detailed project plan with milestones and delivery dates. | A sprint plan that only commits to what’s being delivered in a short iteration of one to four weeks. |
| The project status report is given to stakeholders. | Stakeholders review the work the team completed each sprint. |
| Dependencies are managed through documentation. | The team is responsible for identifying and managing dependencies affecting their work. |
| Work is assigned to team members by a manager or project manager. | The team self-selects work from a prioritized backlog. |
| Governance and budgeting are owned by the project manager or PMO. | The team creates its own working agreement, while budgets are often owned by the Product Owner. |
Given all of these shifts, it’s easy to freak out a little bit about what’s happening to your job. But rest assured, it’s really not all that different. You’re going to give more control to the teams, which frees you up to manage larger, more complex projects across multiple teams.
Project Manager Mindset Shifts that Complement Scrum
The biggest challenge project managers face when an organization moves to agile is relinquishing a command-and-control mindset. By adopting an agile mindset, project managers will work effectively with Scrum teams. Here are a few mindset shifts you may need to make that might feel different from how you’ve worked before:
Take ownership without control. Traditional project management can drift into command-and-control. With Scrum, avoid micromanagement and remember that you own the outcome, but not every decision along the way.
Get comfortable with uncertainty. Scrum thrives in environments where not everything is known upfront, so get comfortable with uncertainty. Instead of having to know everything, focus more on what you’ll learn.
Embrace the notion that ideas can come from anyone. As a project manager, you don’t have to know everything. In fact, teams closest to the work might have some great ideas! Seek to understand before judging and encourage diverse points of view.
Be adaptable to change. Realize that while plans matter, responsiveness on an agile team matters more.
Embrace a New Way of Working
If you’ve ever wondered how project management fits within Scrum—or how to remain an effective leader in an agile organization—our Scrum for Project Managers course was designed specifically for you.
You’ll learn how to work with Scrum teams, manage dependencies, communicate effectively with stakeholders, forecast delivery, and lead without relying on command-and-control practices.
Whether you’re new to Scrum or looking to sharpen your agile leadership skills, this course provides practical techniques you can apply immediately.
Learn more about Scrum for Project Managers course, and get the skills you need to thrive in a Scrum organization.
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