How To Become An Agile Project Manager
Certifiably Agile: Programs like the Digital Project Manager's certificate teach agile fundamentals, so you can gain the necessary skills for executing projects using agile frameworks such as Scrum and Kanban.
Sprints and Story Points: Agile project managers handle tasks like sprint planning and resource management, guiding teams through planning intervals and integrating customer feedback to refine project deliverables with continuous improvement.
Flexibility is Key: Successful agile project managers embrace adaptability and favor agile estimation techniques over traditional planning. You'll focus on evolving project details based on ongoing customer feedback.
Agile project managers plan and execute projects, lead teams, and deliver work that satisfies stakeholders and customers. It's a natural step in a project manager's career path, especially with more organizations transitioning to agile ways of working.
To get into this project management specialization, you'll need knowledge of agile methodologies and the skills to execute projects using them. Here's what you need to know.
But first, you should know that The Digital Project Manager's certificate program covers agile fundamentals and specific methods, so you can gain the skills you need to succeed in this role.
What is an Agile Project Manager?
An agile project manager leads and manages projects using agile frameworks. Agile project management is an iterative approach to project management in which project deliverables are released in increments on a continuous basis and incorporate customer feedback with every iteration.
As an agile project manager, you'll be involved in resource planning and managing the project budget, as well as project planning according to agile methods such as Scrum or Kanban (e.g. story point estimation and sprint planning). You'll assist the product owner with stakeholder communications.
Many organizations and teams are neither strictly agile or waterfall, and some organizations might be in transition or just decide to adopt concepts from both waterfall and agile approaches (i.e. hybrid project management).
These ‘wagile’ or 'water-agile-fall' organizations need project managers with traditional project management skills as well as skills in and knowledge of agile project management.
What Does An Agile Project Manager Do?
Many of the roles of responsibilities of an agile project manager are similar to that of a traditional project manager:
- Facilitating project planning
- Planning project resources (which could include people, equipment, and materials)
- Overseeing the project timelines and budget
- Communicating with the project stakeholders (which could include the project team, customers, clients, and senior management)
As an agile project manager, you'll only plan for the upcoming sprint or two of your project, as opposed to planning all project work upfront (which is how this is done in waterfall—there's a whole phase of the life cycle dedicated to it).
Agile project teams can start work on the deliverables with a base set of requirements. As the project progresses, the deliverables will become more defined based on customer feedback. You'll help the team prioritize feedback and estimate the level of effort and time needed to implement each item, in order to create deliverables that satisfy customer needs.
How To Become An Agile Project Manager
Here's how to become an agile project manager.
Choose An Agile Role
Within agile frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, or Lean, the role of ‘project manager’ does not technically exist. The two roles that are present are Scrum master and product owner.
If you enjoy the coaching and mentoring aspects of being a project manager, then the Scrum master path is for you. This will also prepare you nicely for roles down the road such as agile coach or release train engineer (from SAFe).
If you have strong product knowledge and manage stakeholders well, then the product owner path might be more appealing. This role involves more interaction with customers and stakeholders and will prepare you for roles in product management, program management, or portfolio management.
Build Your Agile Skills
Here are some skills that will be helpful for you to have in an agile role.
Knowledge Of Agile Frameworks
Depending on the framework your team or organization will use, you should have an understanding of the different agile methodologies, the roles involved, processes, and events.
Formal training courses or agile project management certifications are the best way to increase your knowledge of a particular project management methodology. Popular options include AgilePM from APMG International and PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) from the Project Management Institute (PMI).
Agile Estimation Skills
Estimation works a little differently in agile and typically uses concepts such as planning poker, story points, or t-shirt sizes (as opposed to estimating effort in days or time). You should understand how to use these concepts and guide the team to accurate estimations of the required effort to complete tasks or user stories.
Flexibility
Project managers in an agile world need to be flexible and adaptable. If you need to know all of the scope and project details upfront, agile may not be for you. Projects often start with a high-level understanding of the work to be done and value to be provided.
This understanding evolves as the project progresses and you incorporate feedback from the customer. Your project plan will change often, based on a customer’s feedback or a reprioritization of work from the product owner.
Coaching And Mentoring
You'll be involved in training the team on the agile framework, what events and ceremonies need to take place, and what artifacts (or outputs) are produced.
As such, the ability to coach, teach, and mentor the team to improve their knowledge of agile and agile tools (and other project management tools) is essential to efficient teamwork and team success. Being a good coach and mentor also means having empathy and being a good communicator.
Other Agile Project Management Roles
Let's take a closer look at the Scrum master and product owner roles.
Scrum Master
The Scrum master is part of the project or software development team. Scrum masters play an important role on an agile team by:
- Helping to facilitate agile events such as sprint planning meetings, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, retrospectives, and backlog refinement sessions
- Assisting the product owner with refining and prioritizing the product backlog
- Helping to remove blockers or impediments that might prevent the team from meeting their goals
- Mentoring and coaching the team on Scrum, Kanban, and agile practices, workflows, approaches, processes, methods, and tools
The role of a Scrum master is often a ‘servant-leader’ role because they heavily support the work of the agile team.
Product Owner
Agile teams will also have a Product Owner. Apart from working with the team and Scrum master to prioritize a backlog of features and other work for the team, they also own the customer vision. Product owners are the voice of the customer and a point of contact for the customer and other stakeholders.
Some of the responsibilities of a product owner include:
- Setting a vision and goal for the product based on the customer’s needs
- Prioritizing work and features for the project team in a product backlog and maintaining the backlog
- Clarifying customer requirements and the customer vision for the project team
- Creating and updating a product roadmap
Product owners may take on more of the traditional stakeholder management and scope planning tasks during an agile project.
What's Next?
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