Yesterday was day 2 at the annual North American Scrum Gathering (click here for the events from day 1). The day featured several tracks covering a broad array of topics:
- The Edge of Chaos (innovation, risk, cunning…) Host: Jimi Fosdick
- Huge Scrum! (Massive implementations) Host: Sabine Canditt
- Good Practice (e.g. coding, testing, collaboration, design…) Host: Michel Goldenberg
- Scrum in Context (what Scrum can learn from other industries and research, and what Scrum can teach) Host: >>Bob Sarni
- When worlds collide – Scrum and traditional Project Management. Host: Dave Prior and Mike Cottmeyer
When Worlds Collide
“Agile project managers consider Scrum teams their customers”
That is a quote from Sanjiv Augustine in his “Agile PMO” talk. This was the first full session of the day for the Project Management track. His offered some interesting models of what a more adaptive PMO should look like. For example, PMOs should be virtual committees, whose members work on and report to real projects.
PMOs All Around Us.
For the next session, I moderated a panel discussion on the Agile PMO. Since Sanjiv had just spent an hour setting a baseline of what an Agile PMO could be, it was time to get down and dirty with some different perspectives. The panel included:
- “Leading Agile” blogger Mike Cottmeyer
- Scrum expert and PMP Jimi Fosdick
- APLN co-founder Sanjiv Augustine
- Lyssa Adkins, the Agile coaches’ coach
- Mark Perry, PMI Director for Gantthead.com
There was some fun banter back and forth, but we all settled on some core points. First, the PMO should be chartered to enforce principles, rather than compliance. Next, metrics should be driven primarily by business levers, and only secondarily by cost/schedule. All of these experts offered great insights and are worth looking up.
“Agile Project Manager….or not”
Closing out the day, Lyssa Adkins offered a compelling presentation on moving “Traditional Project Manager Turned Agile Coach”. This talk offered some of the best observations about the Project Manager role, and they were posted on the PMI Agile twitter feed. At the end of the talk, Mike Cottmeyer gave an abbreviated Pecha Kucha version of his “Agile PMP” talk, which served as a dynamic counterpoint to Lyssa’s points. Then, at the end of the talk, they started riffing off each other, and arriving at some strong agreement, despite the seemingly opposite positions of their presentation titles.
The day featured an enjoyable knowledge exchange for the relationship of Scrum to project management. Tomorrow will be day 3, featuring an open space format.
Question: What do you think of the observations of these experts?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
“Agile project managers consider Scrum teams their customers” –
That’s an interesting quote because though I don’t have experience of working in an agile environment, my best managers have all been facilitators or those who asked how they could best serve the team.
Phil, I totally agree. The most successful people I bump into within the PMI community share a common quality of team-first. Oh, and you may not be working in an “agile environment”, but you can certainly respond to daily challenges in an agile fashion, even without a specific methodology to guide you. Check out the agile manifesto for details.