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Do you need Project Management experience to be a Scrum Master?
Ever wondered whether you need project management experience to become a Scrum Master? John McFadyen walks us through his perspective.
No, you don't need project management experience in order to become a #scrummaster. In some ways, it may actually benefit you not having any previous experience with traditional waterfall style project management because you won't have picked up any of the bad habits inherent in the approach.
A Scrum Master works with a team of developers and a product owner to create products that have never existed before and to solve complex problems that have never been solved before.
The entire philosophy of Agile environments is that the development team are the experts who are best placed to understand how something should be done. In project management, the project manager decides what should be done, how it should be done, and by when it should be completed.
In a Scrum Team, the team would make these decisions rather than have a single person dictate work.
The Product Owner works with stakeholders to identify what the most valuable work is and in what order of priority the work should be completed. How that work is done is decided by the development team with the product owner receiving an educated estimate of how long it would take to perform.
By contrast, a project manager attempts to articulate the entire project upfront and work out the dependencies and how those will impact proposed timelines. In some cases this works well, for example in civil engineering where people have precise knowledge of what to do and how long it should take.
In complex environments where the answer is unknown, project managers battle to identify what should be built and how it should be built. If you have no experience within a project management environment but stepped into the role of a Scrum Master, you would find that you are the glue that holds the scrum team together and empowers them to make the kind of decisions that really move the team forward.
You would not be investing your time in deciding who does what and how they should do that work at all. You would be helping the team make those estimates and communicate that effectively to the product owner to ensure all stakeholders are informed and updated.
Regardless of what environment you worked in as a Scrum Master, you would be invested in becoming a better scrum master and agile coach rather than learning how to do specific things. So for example, in a software engineering environment, you wouldnt be learning how to be a developer, you would simply focus on learning how to become a better scrum master.
A project manager doesn't necessarily have that luxury as they are a key player in every event that happens throughout the project and are often the only source of communication to project stakeholders so they must be actively involved in the tiny details of the project.
Many project managers actively like being so deeply involved in the project and as such, they can find it hard to make the transition to scrum master where they are a member of the team rather than the sole leader of the team.
If you have significant experience as a project manager, you may battle to make that transition yourself.
If you do have experience as a project manager you can almost certainly make the transition to scrum master but you would need to learn an entirely new skillset.
Visit https://www.agilecentre.com/courses/scrum-master/certified-scrummaster/ for more information on becoming a Certified Scrum Master and visit our Advanced Certified Scrum Master course page on https://www.agilecentre.com/courses/scrum-master/advanced-certified-scrummaster/.
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By John McFadyen
5
22 ratings
Ever wondered whether you need project management experience to become a Scrum Master? John McFadyen walks us through his perspective.
No, you don't need project management experience in order to become a #scrummaster. In some ways, it may actually benefit you not having any previous experience with traditional waterfall style project management because you won't have picked up any of the bad habits inherent in the approach.
A Scrum Master works with a team of developers and a product owner to create products that have never existed before and to solve complex problems that have never been solved before.
The entire philosophy of Agile environments is that the development team are the experts who are best placed to understand how something should be done. In project management, the project manager decides what should be done, how it should be done, and by when it should be completed.
In a Scrum Team, the team would make these decisions rather than have a single person dictate work.
The Product Owner works with stakeholders to identify what the most valuable work is and in what order of priority the work should be completed. How that work is done is decided by the development team with the product owner receiving an educated estimate of how long it would take to perform.
By contrast, a project manager attempts to articulate the entire project upfront and work out the dependencies and how those will impact proposed timelines. In some cases this works well, for example in civil engineering where people have precise knowledge of what to do and how long it should take.
In complex environments where the answer is unknown, project managers battle to identify what should be built and how it should be built. If you have no experience within a project management environment but stepped into the role of a Scrum Master, you would find that you are the glue that holds the scrum team together and empowers them to make the kind of decisions that really move the team forward.
You would not be investing your time in deciding who does what and how they should do that work at all. You would be helping the team make those estimates and communicate that effectively to the product owner to ensure all stakeholders are informed and updated.
Regardless of what environment you worked in as a Scrum Master, you would be invested in becoming a better scrum master and agile coach rather than learning how to do specific things. So for example, in a software engineering environment, you wouldnt be learning how to be a developer, you would simply focus on learning how to become a better scrum master.
A project manager doesn't necessarily have that luxury as they are a key player in every event that happens throughout the project and are often the only source of communication to project stakeholders so they must be actively involved in the tiny details of the project.
Many project managers actively like being so deeply involved in the project and as such, they can find it hard to make the transition to scrum master where they are a member of the team rather than the sole leader of the team.
If you have significant experience as a project manager, you may battle to make that transition yourself.
If you do have experience as a project manager you can almost certainly make the transition to scrum master but you would need to learn an entirely new skillset.
Visit https://www.agilecentre.com/courses/scrum-master/certified-scrummaster/ for more information on becoming a Certified Scrum Master and visit our Advanced Certified Scrum Master course page on https://www.agilecentre.com/courses/scrum-master/advanced-certified-scrummaster/.