Over the past one hundred years, organisations have mostly followed the management and leadership style of early pioneers like Frederick Winslow Taylor.
The philosophy was that managers are smart and valuable to the organisation whilst workers simply needed to follow instructions and were easily replaceable.
In this style of working, a senior manager made all the decisions, assigned work to designated workers, and then placed supervisors above those workers to ensure compliance, diligence, and obedience.
Waterfall style project management follows this same pattern. A #projectdirector or #projectmanager does all the thinking and research around a project, defines a scope, assigns a budget and deadline, and then assigns work to various people.
The project manager then 'drives' the #project and frequently 'pushes' those who have been assigned work to complete their tasks within the specific period allocated and within the budget specified.
This process rinses and repeats throughout the project phases until the project is 'completed' and everyone has done the work they were assigned to do.
If the project is a success, the project manager gets a pat on the back. If the project fails, the project manager takes a bullet. As you can imagine, the stakes are super high and project managers operate under great pressure and stress.
So why is Scrum different? Why don't #agile environments require a single person to head up the product development process and assign work, tell people how to do the work, and then 'drive' them, daily, to do the work?
In complex environments where we are creating a product, feature or service for the first time or solving a problem that has never been solved before, things work a lot differently.
In this short video, John McFadyen discusses why there is no project manager in #scrum and touches on how #projectmanagement is different to #agile and #scrum #productdevelopment.
John has worked on some of the highest performing #scrumteams in the world as both a #scrummaster and #agilecoach. He has also worked at the coalface of some of the UK and Europe's largest, most complex #agiletransformations so he's worked with both project directors and #agileleaders in high stakes environments.
If you like the idea of becoming a scrum master, visit our Certified Scrum Master course page on https://www.agilecentre.com/courses/scrum-master/certified-scrummaster/
If you are already a scrum master and want to upskill, visit our Advanced Certified Scrum Master course page on https://www.agilecentre.com/courses/scrum-master/advanced-certified-scrummaster/
If you have several years' experience as a scrum master and want to both validate and certify your professional skills, visit our Certified Scrum Professional Scrum Master course page on https://www.agilecentre.com/courses/scrum-master/certified-scrum-professional-scrum-master/
If you like the idea of mentored and coach-driven skills development, visit our Agile Coach Academy on https://www.agilecentre.com/courses/agile-coach/agile-coach-academy/
If you have identified #coaching as a valuable skill to develop, visit our on-demand Introduction to coaching course page on https://academy.agilecentre.com/courses/introduction-to-coaching
For more information on John McFadyen, visit https://www.johnmcfadyen.com or connect with John on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmcfadyen/
#agile #scrum #projectmanagement #projectmanager #scrummaster #agilecoach #scrumframework #certifiedscrummaster #csm #acsm #advancedcertifiedscrummaster #projects #productdevelopment