1. Agile and the Project Manager
Where is my WBS? Who un-installed Microsoft Project?
©2008 Protegra Inc. All rights reserved.
1

2. Learning Outcomes
1. Describe some differences between
Traditional & Agile PMs
2. Describe differences between the PM
deliverables
3. 7 Traits for an Agile PM
4. And one more thing….
2

3. Agile PM
 Traditional Project Management manages the known,
Agile Project Management manages the unknown
 There are distinctly different ways how you manage the
unknown versus the known
 There are distinctly different people and styles that are
more suited to managing the unknown versus the known

4. Traditional PM tendencies
 Detail Oriented
 Manages the details
 Manages the Plan
 Doesn’t prefer change
 Guardian Temperament

5. Agile PM tendencies
 Encourages Change
 Comfortable with Ambiguity
 Comfortable with Delegation, Trust
 Manages Value
 Idealist Temperament

6. Idealist
 These are big picture people who lead followers to pursue
great dreams. They thrive on people issues and gravitate
toward the soft skills: conflict resolution, negotiation,
team building, facilitating.
 Diplomacy and strategy are their strong suits

7. Guardian
 People with this temperament like to play by a set of rules.
These are the stabilizers in the organization, working to
keep the boat on an even keel.
 Meeting budgets and deadlines and following the plan are
important to Guardians.

8. The Difference
 In waterfall projects you focus on managing people and
tasks, in Agile projects you focus on leading the process
 Facilitate decision making versus making the decisions

9. Deliverable differences
Traditional Agile
Work Breakdown Structure Priorized Backlog
Weekly Status Reports Daily Stand ups
Project Plan Iteration Plan
MS Project Stickies
Problem Solver Problem Solver Assistant
Text Reports Visual Boards

10. 7 Key Traits
 Cross Functional
 Relationship Builder
 Encourages Innovation
 Comfortable with ambiguity
 Facilitator
 Prefers to collaborate
 Provide visibility, not status

11. Cross Functional
 Ideally an Agile PM will also play other roles on the project
as well
 Analyst
 Developer
 Tester
 Equal team member

12. Relationship Builder
 On a Traditional Project, the Analysts usually own the
relationship with the business
 On an Agile Project, the Analysts still have a strong
relationship, but the Agile PM needs to also build a strong
relationship to allow them to help to promote value
 To do this they need to understand the solution

13. Encourages Innovation
 As an Agile Team member and leader, the Project
Manager need to encourage the team to innovate
 This may cause more change, but also more value
 One of the ways this is done is by ensuring
Retrospectives as held
 And ensuring those retrospectives value innovation

14. Comfortable with Ambiguity
 The Agile PM must be comfortable with ambiguity and
vagueness
 The Agile PM must be comfortable with not having a
detailed plan or solution up front

15. Facilitator
 The Agile Project Manager does not have a position of
authority
 As a consequence, they must excel at facilitating
decisions with the client and between team mates

16. Prefers to Collaborate
 An Agile PM, like all Agile team members, must prefer to
collaborate.
 Even when this collaboration is not required. This is done
because the PM believes that better solutions will arise.
 Not because they have to

17. Provides Visibility, not status
 Instead of preparing status reports to communicate
status, the Agile PM creates an environments that
provides total visibility to the status of the project for all
to see
 Kanban Boards, Visual Charts, User Story Maps

18. And one more thing
• Underpinning everything we have discussed is respect for
people
• Some words that seem wrong to use:
- Resources
- Software Factory
- Probably others…
• Agile Project Management is all about helping to maximize
velocity, minimize waste, and respecting every individual
18

19. Agile Prime Directive
"Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly
believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what
they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources
available, and the situation at hand.“
--Norm Kerth, Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team
Reviews
19

20. Final Thought
• "In traditional projects the team works for the PM to achieve
the PM's goals, in agile projects the PM works for the team
to achieve the team's goals"
20

21. Summary
 An Agile Project Manager is a different role and set of skills
that a traditional PM
 Usually it helps if the Agile PM has a base competency in
another skill set on the project as well
 Many of the traditional PM characteristics are still required,
but these Agile characteristics are important to have in
addition

22. Agile is a Direction
Individuals and Processes and
Interactions Tools
Working Comprehensive
software documentation
Customer Contract
Collaboration Negotiation
Responding Following
to change a plan
22