Chapter 5: The Project Manager s Role

Successfully managing projects in an agile environment is no easy task. It requires a rare combination of skills and characteristics. You will need to connect with your technical team, organize them, and drive the project forward. At the same time, you will need to allow for and guide the inevitable course changes, while keeping the project aligned with the overall business objectives. You will be challenged to balance the desire for measurable progress against the creative needs of your team and the generally iterative nature of agile PM. And you will need to do all of this while establishing and maintaining credibility with a team, where you may not be the ultimate subject matter expert. This chapter explores some of the agile PM concepts that will aid the project manager in performing these duties.

Taking an Outward Perspective

The agile project manager will take more of an outward-facing perspective versus a solely inward one (see Figure 5-1). Classic PM teaches you to focus on the project plan as your primary tool to execute and complete the project. The plan generally focuses on three key project dimensions—schedule, scope, and resource estimates—and, to be successful, the project manager must be given some reasonable level of formal authority over the plan, as well as the project team. A common mantra is to bring the project scope in on schedule and under cost. This inward-looking perspective tends to promote a static view of the project dimensions. Since the sponsor, project manager, and team agree to a project definition and plan up-front, the perceived success or failure of the project is often based more on variation from this plan, rather than the achievement of real business objectives. If you are operating in a mature and fairly predictable project environment, then this approach works pretty well, since it emphasizes the organization and discipline necessary for success in this paradigm—when the project dimensions remain relatively stable throughout the project. However, in the uncertain environment of agile PM, we would be na ve if we did not expect changes to the project plan on several occasions, certainly much more than in a mature project environment.

Figure 5-1: The project manager's orientation in an agile versus classic environment.

Attempts to employ a strong inward-focused project management mentality in an agile environment often end up with one of three results. First, as the project progresses, it will inevitably take a few turns that were not accounted for in the original plan. If the project manager maintains an inward-facing perspective and subscribes to the notion that project performance is based on the team's ability to deliver what they signed up for (i.e., the original plan), then he will spend a good portion of his time analyzing and documenting these variations from the original plan. As the zigs start to mount where the plan called for a zag, the project manager will soon be consumed with tracking, analyzing, and documenting ever more complex variations. When this happens, the project manager reduces himself to what is essentially an administrative support role. While it is certainly smart to understand why your project is off its planned course, as project manager you need to keep your eye on accomplishing your project objective—not on excessive paperwork.

Second, if the project manager is strong enough and has solid support from management, he can develop into a dreaded taskmaster—someone who is constantly on the team members to get tasks done on time and perhaps ahead of time (if he's really aggressive). From the team-building perspective, I don't think that this ever goes over well. In extreme cases, it can end up destroying the project. From a strict, project-efficiency perspective, this approach may work in the very predictable project environment, where the tasks are fairly rote and there's not much chance for deviation from the plan. However, as in the other examples that we've discussed, this method is unlikely to be successful when iteration and multiple paths are required to reach the final destination. Project managers taking this tact in an agile environment will be showing the team that they really don't understand how to manage agile projects, which leads us to the next scenario.

Agile Strategy

Do not become a taskmaster. If tasks are not getting done, the project team probably feels that the internal project plan needs to change. Look outside of your project for nontechnical points that support or dissuade these changes, then present them to the technical leaders for discussion.

The third possibility is that the project manager simply loses credibility with the project team. The team knows that the original plan needs to shift, but the inward-focused project manager sees changes to the plan as variances that will only delay the project and impact his perception of project success. The team members may not know explicitly what the project manager needs to do (after all, it's not their job), but they do know that sticking steadfastly to the original plan isn't it. While there is certainly some room for debate, the project manager must be prepared to try some alternative approaches, or risk losing credibility. If he cannot strike a balance or justify his position with the team, passive and active resistance may develop. Eventually, the project manager risks being pushed, once again, into an administrative support role, thus greatly reducing the value that he could add to the project.

The agile project manager recognizes that changes and iterations to the plan will happen. In fact, they are necessary for the project's ultimate success. She will look for ways to help direct those changes in a way that will support the high-level business needs, rather than fighting them on the grounds of outdated project boundaries.

Agile Strategy

Continually scan the external environment, looking for business drivers that may affect the project. Identifying these influences for the team will help you make the right course changes during the project.

By scanning the environment outside of the project itself, the project manager can identify business drivers that, when combined with the technical drivers, will help the team decide which direction to go when confronted with a fork in the road. The rest of the project team is focused internally. From their internal focus, the team will drive change from a technical perspective. The project manager should balance those technical inputs with the corresponding external influences. If she doesn't do this, the project risks falling out of alignment with the business objectives.

Rather than waiting for some unexpected, external event to come crashing down on the project, the project manager should actively search the external environment for such events. Just as individuals may bring technical issues and information to the rest of the team for discussion and consideration, the project manager should bring external business information back to the team so that they can evaluate its impact on their work.

Agile Strategy

Add value to the team and gain credibility by bringing relative, external information to the table so it can be discussed along with the technical elements surfaced by other team members.

If the project manager is not a technical expert, it is even more important to look outward for valuable information that may affect the project. In an agile environment, the project manager is rarely handed formal authority over the team. She must establish her own credibility to successfully lead the team. In this situation, a surefire way to lose credibility is for the project manager to challenge technical experts on technical issues. On the other hand, a way to gain credibility is to trust that team members know what they're doing, while bringing them additional, valuable information from outside of the project that complements their own information.

You may ask, "With all this looking outside the project, who's watching the plan?" The answer is: You are. It's just that you'll spend less energy focused on driving the original plan and more energy on facilitating the changes that will get you to your final destination. I realize that there are only so many hours in the day. Surveying the external environment, in addition to watching the internals of the project, may be overload. This leads me into the discussion of the agile project management infrastructure, which is a topic discussed in further detail in Chapter 10. In essence, an agile PM infrastructure is a concise toolkit geared toward efficiently managing the relevant internals of project execution, thus freeing up much of the project manager's time to focus externally.

Tracking External Trends and Variances

An interesting dynamic of having an external view is that, when it expands your perspective of the project, it leads you to monitor untraditional metrics as barometers of project progress. In classic PM, the project manager usually monitors variance to the internal elements of schedule, scope, and cost to judge project success. However, in an agile project, monitoring variance to the plan may be a futile exercise. As project managers, we want to facilitate the correct course changes necessary for project success. Making the actual course-change decisions is probably driven by both technical needs and external events, and you must consider both. Since these decisions are influenced by external events, you'll need to monitor variances and trends in these events (see Figure 5-2).

Figure 5-2: Trends and variances monitored by the project manager in an agile versus classic environment.

By monitoring the trends in external business influencers, the project manager and team are better able to make the decisions that will keep their project aligned with the true business needs. It is in these tactical project decisions that the integration of the project and the business really pays off.

Agile Strategy

Track trends of key external influencers, as well as variances from what is expected, and you will move from being reactive to proactive.