What's up everyone. Welcome back to my channel. Joshua Partogi here. In
today's video I'd like to share with you the differences between Project Manager
and Scrum Master. If this is something that interests you, as usual don't go
anywhere. Stay tuned. The reason why I want to talk about the differences
between Project Manager and Scrum Master is because in every Professional Scrum
Master (PSM) classes that I have facilitated, there are at least two participants who
will ask me what are the differences between Project Manager and Scrum Master.
Yes, I do understand that Project Manager role and Scrum Master role are totally
different and should not be compared, however many of these participants told
me they have a genuine intent to become an awesome Scrum Master and knowing the
differences between Project Manager and Scrum Master will be helpful for them to
create the transition path from Project Manager to an awesome Scrum Master. So I
thought I'm making this video for those of you who are coming from project
management background and have a genuine intent to become an awesome Scrum Master.
If this sounds like you, stay on this video. Whenever people asked me about the
differences between Project Manager and Scrum Master in my Professional Scrum
Master (PSM) classes I would flash up an exercise as I do not have any
background or experience in project management. In the first part of the
exercise I asked the participants to elaborate as many information as
possible about the project manager role and then at the second part of the
exercise I compared the differences of Scrum Master role and the Project
Manager role based on the information they have elaborated in the first part
of the exercise. So this is how the exercise goes. So for the first part of
the exercise as we concentrate on the project manager role first I asked every
participant to write down on sticky notes as many activities as they
possibly know that the project manager does from day-to-day. So after
participants have listed down all of the activities that they know that the
project manager do from day to day, I ask them to merge similar items and narrow
it down to at least three to four items. And until today, most participants agree
that project managers in essence do planning, controlling, monitoring and
reporting the project status to the stakeholders. And the context here is
project. So after they have merged similar items and narrow it down, I asked
them to look at the stickies and I asked them another question I asked them: "Based
on these activities, how do we know that project managers are successful in doing
their job? What are their scope of work and accountabilities? How do we evaluate
whether Project Managers are successful in doing their job? What are their key
performance indicator?" So until today, the majority of participants agree that the
Project Managers is deemed successful in doing their job when the project they
manage is delivered on time, on scope and on budget. Again the context is project.
So after they have elaborated Project Managers scope of work and
accountabilities along with the key performance indicator, I asked them to look
at the stickies again and I asked them another question for one last time. I
asked them what are the required skills for Project Managers to be successful in
achieving their account abilities. So until today
the majority of participants agree that in essence project managers need great
project management skills to ensure that the project they manage is delivered on
time, on scope and on budget. In some contexts, project managers need to have
technical skills. For example if they are managing construction project they at
least need to have technical skills in construction
or civil engineering or architecture. After they've completed the first part
which is to elaborate as many information as possible about the
Project Manager role, we turn to the second part where I explain the Scrum
Master core purposes, what are the Scrum Master main accountability and also the
required skills for Scrum Master to be effective and successful in doing their
job. So first I explained to them the Scrum Master core purposes, why do they
exist and what does the Scrum Master do from day to day. The Scrum Master exists
not to control but to enable. The Scrum Master exists to enable agility
throughout the whole company and not only the Scrum team. Control implies
limitation and constraint. The Scrum Master enable the whole organisation to
go beyond limitation and achieve greatness in delivering value
continuously to the customers. Rather than becoming the middle person to
monitor and to report, the Scrum Master create an organisation of trusts and
create an organization that is transparent so everyone within the
company have full visibility of their current reality and make decision based
on that rather than using political power. The Scrum Master create an
environment of psychological safety so these transparency is used to
accelerate learning rather than used as an opportunity to blame someone. After I
have explained to them the core purposes of a Scrum Master, why does the role
exist, what does the Scrum Master do from day
to day, I explained to them the Scrum Master scope and accountabilities which
goes beyond projects. I also explain to them how do we evaluate the Scrum Master
performance, what are the Scrum Master key performance indicators. The Scrum
Master scope of work and accountability is not project. The Scrum Master scope
and accountability go beyond project, that is to
continuously improve the whole company agility. Unlike a project that has a
defined timeline, improving the whole company agility does not have a defined
timeline and is a never-ending work because the company can always be more
agile than yesterday. An awesome scrum master is doing an awesome job if the
agility metrics is improving from time to time. And the scrum master is not only
focused at the Scrum team level only. The Scrum Master needs to influence everyone
in the company so that the whole company agility can be improved from time to
time. So the Scrum Master is like the organisation change leader and coach.
Unlike the Project Manager, the Scrum Master does not manage project. The Scrum
Master continuously improve the organisation agility in delivering value
to customers. This is a leadership and a coaching role. I have made a video
specifically on Scrum Master accountability. If you are interested to
learn more about Scrum Master accountability click the link up here to
watch the video. If you're interested to learn on how to evaluate the Scrum
Master's performance in improving organizational agility, I've already made
a video on that, click the link up here to learn more about it. After I have
explained to them the Scrum Master scope of work and accountabilities and also
the key performance indicator, I explained to them the Scrum Master
required skills and the stances that the Scrum Master used to be effective and
successful in doing their job. Because the Scrum Master is the organisation
change leader and coach, the required skills for Scrum Master to be effective
and successful in doing their job are coaching skills, facilitation skills
teaching skills and behavioural science skills. As Scrum Master also uses the
mentoring stance, the Scrum Master is expected to have technical skills also
because the Scrum Master need to bring their own experience
especially when they are mentoring the development teams on cleaning up their
technical debt or mentoring the management about servant leadership. An
awesome Scrum Master know when to apply the right skills and the right stances
according to the context where the Scrum Master is in to improve the whole
organization agility. I have made a video on the Scrum Master stances if you're
interested to learn more about it click the link up here to watch the video. So
at the end of the exercise we have a flip chart which displays the
differences between Project Manager role and the Scrum Master role which looks
something like this. So as you can see because I do not have
any project management background I distribute the knowledge generation to
participants. I asked participants to elaborate as many information as they
possibly could about the Project Manager role and only in the second part I
explained to them about the Scrum Master role because that's the role I know more
than the Project Manager role. Wow that was quite a long video but thank you for
staying until the end of this video. I hope you found today's video helpful
especially for those of you who are transitioning from Project Manager to
Scrum Master. If you liked today's video as usual don't forget to smash that like
button and don't forget to subscribe to my channel so that you won't miss any of
my video in the future. See you until my next video. Bye.