Why do so many people believe that the Scrum Master is a project manager? Is it perhaps the word “master” which gives people the impression that the Scrum Master is “in control” of the project? And why do people believe in the first place that there has to be a single person who takes over the responsibilities of a project manager? Are they so stuck in their command-and-control waterfall box that they cannot imagine a different setup?
Perhaps the idea of the Scrum Master as project manager has become a kind of self-perpetuating myth by now. When HR managers see hundreds of job openings for “Scrum Master / Agile Project Manager” positions, then perhaps they start believing that a Scrum Master is really a project manager.
There is one positive aspect about this misunderstanding: It is actually a fairly simple test to prove that someone has never actually read the Scrum Guide, because I struggle to find many project management tasks in the description of the Scrum Master role in the Scrum Guide. If the Scrum Master manages anything based on the description in the Scrum Guide, then it is Scrum itself – and I consider even that to be a bit of a stretch.
So how does the Scrum Master role compare to that of a project manager? As that seems to be such a difficult question for many people, let’s break it down as simple as possible, first by describing what a project manager does, using a kind of simple XML notation:
A <actor>project manager</actor> <activity>manages</activity> <target>projects</target>.
Sorry if this seems stupidly simple and obvious. Bear with me for just a second, because this leads to the apparently not-so-obvious question what the “activity” and “object” are for a Scrum Master. Here is the answer when you condense the Scrum Guide description of the role into one sentence:
A <actor>Scrum Master</actor> <activity>helps</activity> <target>people</target>.
The description of the Scrum Master role in the Scrum Guide is all about the Scrum Master “serving” people. The Scrum Master helps the Product Owners to deal with their responsibilities, helps the Development Team understand Scrum and helps them by removing impediments. The Scrum Master also helps everyone else who is not on the Scrum team to better understand Scrum and to interact in a productive manner with the Scrum team. A lot of “helps” there and a lot of “people” who are the targets of this help.
Perhaps now it is more obvious, why I used an XML notation to break this down into little pieces? Because now the difference between project managers and Scrum Masters becomes too glaringly obvious to ignore. The Scrum Master does not manage. The Scrum Master helps (or serves, if you prefer that term). And the target of the activity is not a project but the people who are involved with the project.
Also, I hope it becomes a bit clearer why I do not think that “managing Scrum” makes the Scrum Master a project manager. Yes, the Scrum Master ensures that the Scrum rules are followed and moderates Scrum meetings. But managing meetings and managing a project are two different things. In the end, the background here is still that the Scrum Master helps the other team members to apply Scrum correctly.
Going from being a project manager to being a Scrum Master is a bit like going from baking bread to farming wheat. Even though both tasks can appear in the same value chain, they are still completely different activities with completely different targets.
I am not saying the Scrum Master cannot take over any project management responsibilities. All I am saying is that this is definitely not the primary role of a Scrum Master. I am also not saying that a project with Scrum teams cannot have a project manager on a “higher” level. That is a completely different discussion which I am definitely not going to touch here.
Most importantly, I am not saying that the project management tasks and responsibilities as defined e.g. in a waterfall process just evaporate when moving to Scrum. Some of them become obsolete, but most of them are meaningful and necessary, so someone has to handle them.
And someone does handle them in Scrum. Yes, that is described in the Scrum Guide, though it’s not so immediately obvious.
Now you wonder who handles these project management responsibilities in Scrum? The answer might actually be quite surprising to many people, but it is a very important key aspect of Scrum, as it helps with understanding many aspects of Scrum that are frequently misunderstood and questioned.
I’ll leave that answer for the next post though (sorry for the cliffhanger).
AgileEvangelist 