An Agile Project Manager manages the unknown rather than the known details like a Traditional Project Manager. Some key differences are that an Agile PM encourages change and ambiguity, delegates tasks while managing value, and has an idealist temperament focused on collaboration rather than guarding a strict plan. An Agile PM acts as a facilitator rather than sole decision maker, provides visibility through visual tools instead of text reports, and prefers collaborating to find innovative solutions.

1. Role of a Agile Project
Manager
How is it different?

2. Agile PM
Traditional Project Management manages the
known, Agile Project Management manages
the unknown
There are distinctly different ways how you
manage the unknown versus the known
There are distinctly different people and
styles that are more suited to managing the
unknown versus the known

3. Traditional PM
tendencies
Detail Oriented
Manages the details
Manages the Plan
Doesn’t prefer change
Guardian Temperament

4. Agile PM tendencies
Encourages Change
Comfortable with Ambiguity
Comfortable with Delegation, Trust
Manages Value
Idealist Temperament

5. Idealist
These are big picture people who lead
followers to pursue great dreams. They
thrive on people issues and gravitate toward
the soft skills: conflict resolution, negotiation,
team building, facilitating.
Diplomacy and strategy are their strong suits

6. Guardian
People with this temperament like to play by
a set of rules. These are the stabilizers in
the organization, working to keep the boat
on an even keel.
Meeting budgets and deadlines and following
the plan are important to Guardians.

7. The Difference
In waterfall projects you focus on managing
people and tasks, in Agile projects you focus
on leading the process
Facilitate decision making versus making
the decisions

8. Deliverable differences
Traditional Agile
Work Breakdown Structure Priorized Backlog
Weekly Status Reports Daily Stand ups
Project Plan Iteration Plan
MS Project Stickies
Problem Solver Problem Solver Assistant
Text Reports Visual Boards

9. 7 Key Traits
Cross Functional
Relationship Builder
Encourages Innovation
Comfortable with ambiguity
Facilitator
Prefers to collaborate
Provide visibility, not status

10. Cross Functional
Ideally an Agile PM will also play other roles
on the project as well
Analyst
Developer
Tester

11. Relationship Builder
On a Traditional Project, the Analysts usually
own the relationship with the business
On an Agile Project, the Analysts still have a
strong relationship, but the Agile PM needs
to also build a strong relationship to allow
them to help to promote value
To do this they need to understand the
solution

12. Encourages Innovation
As an Agile Team member and leader, the
Project Manager need to encourage the
team to innovate
This may cause more change, but also more
value

13. Comfortable with
Ambiguity
The Agile PM must be comfortable with
ambiguity and vagueness
The Agile PM must be comfortable with not
having a detailed plan or solution up front

14. Facilitator
The Agile Project Manager does not have a
position of authority
As a consequence, they must excel at
facilitating decisions with the client and
between team mates

15. Prefers to Collaborate
An Agile PM, like all Agile team members,
must prefer to collaborate.
Even when this collaboration is not required.
This is done because the PM believes that
better solutions will arise.

16. Provides Visibility, not
status
Instead of preparing status reports to
communicate status, the Agile PM creates an
environments that provides total visibility to
the status of the project for all to see
Kanban Boards, Visual Charts, User Story
Maps

17. Summary
An Agile Project Manager is a different role
and set of skills that a traditional PM
Usually it helps if the Agile PM has a base
competency in another skill set on the
project as well
Many of the traditional PM characteristics
are still required, but these Agile
characteristics are important to have in
addition

18. Questions ?