I think this debate is a lot more important than people realize. Project Management is a framework that is being actively considered as "alternative" to Agile. Sure, you can have a team Scrum/Kanban every two weeks/day, but if the overall execution framework is slow, start/stop and interrupt based (like project management is), there's no agility at the business/product level!
This discussion is more important now than ever because of the merger between PMI and Agile Alliance.
Good point, Maria, about the lack of support for product people regarding the agile mindset. There’s a lot of discussion around Agile and developers, and the focus is usually on them. But we forget about the "value maximizer"—we just throw around big words and expect everything to make sense. We overlook the most basic skills needed for a PO/PM, and as you mentioned, many of them were project managers (or BAs in the waterfall model).
In most of the companies I’ve worked for, training was offered only to SMs or developers. Even the organizations that provide agile certifications and training (and still didn't merged with PMI 😉 ) don’t focus on the basic skills. You can’t just teach Scrum to a PO—it’s useless if they don’t understand core agile concepts or even what “value” actually means for their company.
Thanks for highlighting that. And yes, that's a big miss. What's more, I remember how hard it could be to coach the PO/PM. Because they usually are considered "management" role, they have some experience already and it's hard for them to admit "they don't know" fearing to lose their position and status.
Roman Pichler made a comment in our last recording for the podcast that relates to this: Whatever is offered to PO's/PM's needs to bring better quality of life for them, and a clear identity. Scrum did that with software teams, and to an extent, the "Discovery" ideas are doing the same for PO's in the product world.
Most Agile frameworks have little or nothing to say about the PO role.
We can do better!
Maybe you guys want to take up the challenge at the Global Agile Summit?
Disclaimer: I'm the one being interviewed :)
I think this debate is a lot more important than people realize. Project Management is a framework that is being actively considered as "alternative" to Agile. Sure, you can have a team Scrum/Kanban every two weeks/day, but if the overall execution framework is slow, start/stop and interrupt based (like project management is), there's no agility at the business/product level!
This discussion is more important now than ever because of the merger between PMI and Agile Alliance.
I've also made my case elsewhere: https://open.substack.com/pub/vascoduarte/p/software-has-outgrown-project-management
Good point, Maria, about the lack of support for product people regarding the agile mindset. There’s a lot of discussion around Agile and developers, and the focus is usually on them. But we forget about the "value maximizer"—we just throw around big words and expect everything to make sense. We overlook the most basic skills needed for a PO/PM, and as you mentioned, many of them were project managers (or BAs in the waterfall model).
In most of the companies I’ve worked for, training was offered only to SMs or developers. Even the organizations that provide agile certifications and training (and still didn't merged with PMI 😉 ) don’t focus on the basic skills. You can’t just teach Scrum to a PO—it’s useless if they don’t understand core agile concepts or even what “value” actually means for their company.
Thanks for highlighting that. And yes, that's a big miss. What's more, I remember how hard it could be to coach the PO/PM. Because they usually are considered "management" role, they have some experience already and it's hard for them to admit "they don't know" fearing to lose their position and status.
Roman Pichler made a comment in our last recording for the podcast that relates to this: Whatever is offered to PO's/PM's needs to bring better quality of life for them, and a clear identity. Scrum did that with software teams, and to an extent, the "Discovery" ideas are doing the same for PO's in the product world.
Most Agile frameworks have little or nothing to say about the PO role.
We can do better!
Maybe you guys want to take up the challenge at the Global Agile Summit?
A body of knowledge for the PO/PM community? :)