by Jesse Fewell on January 20, 2010
Agile tool vendor, Version One released its “first annual Agile Salary survey” today on its website [PDF download]. The survey yielded some interesting results, that are worth mentioning here.
According to the survey, those North Americans aggressively using Agile techniques earn a premium of a 2.5% to 2.8% annually. The survey declines to speculate why this is. Certainly, you could interpret this to mean that Agile teams deliver sooner with higher quality, and thus are in higher demand. However, it is equally possible that only those projects with more experienced and valued professionals feel confident to experiment with Agile project management. Further complicating this observation is the breakdown of WHO actually responded to this survey:
Only 28% of respondants were involved in management, but 46% respondants were software engineers. When you consider, on average, that senior software engineers earn more than senior project managers, this may skew the results. That is, it could be that all members of an Agile team earn more than those using conventional project management. But it could also be Agile software engineers earn so much more than their conventional counterparts, it could mask the fact that there is little to no difference for project managers. That being said, I’m inclined to think that Agile project managers ARE in higher demand, especially when you consider the dramatic increase in Certified ScrumMasters, the attendance at Agile PM events, and increased interested by executives.
Finally, there was this added observation:
Not much surprise here: more experience earns more salary. Consider also that team members end up in the project manager role only after at least a few years on the job, and this aligns with common observation. Doing the math, each year of experience gets you another $2,724 annually. However, what is noteworthy is WHO has the requisite years under their belt:
While the agile community may be a young community of professionals (the majority are 39 years old or younger), it’s a very experienced group with the vast majority (70%) having at least 5 years or more of experience.
Bottom line? The survey doesn’t tell you why, but Agile Project Managers do earn more money.
by Jesse Fewell on January 18, 2010
That was a quote from Sanjiv Augustine, who presented this past week at the DC chapter of the APLN. His talk was titled “The Agile PMO: Scaling Agile through Adaptive Governance”. You can download the slides from his company’s website, but Sanjiv offered a few great points you won’t find in there.
“If you consistently deliver garbage, then all you have is a repeatable process”
Sanjiv offered us this point when explaining WHY you want a Project Management Office (PMO). Too often, project managers are told to serve the PMO, when it should be the PMO working to help projects be successful. The whole point of a PMO should be to improve project delivery, not merely achieving policy compliance. If your PMO can derive its tasks from this kind of focus, then you’re already ahead of the game.
“An Agile PMO is NOT a Scrum team”
After explaining what a PMO should do, Sanjiv gave us an idea of what it should look like. In particular, it should not consist of dedicated resources. Instead, it should be a standing committee, comprised of representatives from each of the portfolio’s projects. In that way, the projects retain the ultimate authority over the process. The committee discusses and debates what decisions should be made to support project delivery: switching staff, moving budget, or even killing a failing project. If there are no dedicated staff on a PMO, and it’s charged with supporting (as opposed to delivering), then by definition, it’s not a cross-functional Scrum team. This was a fascinating model, because it flies in the face of the conventional PMO, having full-time staff mandating decisions to project teams from on high….a model which seems to contribute to the very high kill rate for PMOs themselves.
“I make more money finishing smaller projects one at a time”
One of the more compelling parts of Sanjiv’s talk was when he wasn’t actually talking. Specifically, he showed off a video interview of his home renovation contractor, Steve. It turns out that Steve is a construction guy that embraces Lean management principles. He explained in the interview that when he had a larger crew, working several projects at once, he had nothing but headaches. He wasn’t able to guide the all the work sites at once, so he would often show up to find misunderstandings and mistakes. Furthermore, visiting all those work sites every day left Steve feeling stressed out and frayed around the edges. Eventually, he trimmed down to just one team, working on one project at a time, and became much happier. Apparently, downsizing his operation didn’t hurt the bottom line: Steven the one-project-at-a-time “lean contractor” drives a Porsche 911.
As always, the best part of the evening came with the networking afterwards. Once the talk was over, Sanjiv sat down with me, Richard Cheng, and the gang from Code71 to talk about these topics more in depth. I strongly encourage all of you to consider attending the next APLN chapter meeting in Washington DC, or in your own neck of the woods.
