The profession of traditional Project Management has been around for a long time, with a large established body of knowledge and an army of certified PMP® holders worldwide. The introduction of Agile and Scrum rocked the boat, and PMs who practiced in the old fashion wondered if they could adapt to this new world. The Scrum Master role is the antithesis of a traditional Project Manager in many ways. So, can a Project Manager successfully become a Scrum Master? Let’s see…
Similarities
In some ways, the role of a Project Manager and Scrum Master are alike. Both entail leadership and support of the team to succeed, but that might be where the similarities stop. I think the roles are more different than they are similar.
Differences
There are many ways in which the roles diverge from one another. In traditional Project Management, a project goes through distinct phases that are serial and sequential. Agile projects run incrementally and iteratively. If a PM is to switch to a Scrum Master successfully, they must unlearn what they have learned (thank you, Master Yoda).
Transition Requirements
You can tell I’m a Business Analyst at heart by the title of this section. Transition requirements are temporary and only exist to take something from one state to another. Once you’ve made the transition, the requirements are no longer needed. For a Project Manager to transition into a Scrum Master, I suggest the following set of transition requirements:
- Throw what you already know out the window
I don’t care if you’re a PMP® and have been “practicing” Project Management for one or more decades. The way of the past is not the way of the future. While some projects may still use traditional project management methods, most won’t.
If you want to succeed in a Scrum Master role, you need to throw out the old PMBOK® and pick up the latest version. The PMI® has adapted to the times and embraced agile, and you need to, too. The 7th Edition of the PMBOK® takes a less prescriptive approach and encourages tailoring the situation to whatever works best for the context of your project. This means that you won’t always need the lengthy, tedious, and unnecessary documentation and overhead you are accustomed to.
- Forget about command-and-control
Think you’re in charge as a Scrum Master? Think again – you’re not. You are there to serve – quite literally. In this new role, you won’t be directing the work or controlling the flow of information. Instead, you empower your team, provide them with the tools they need, get rid of any roadblocks, and then get out of their way so they can figure out how to do their work.
Notice how the title of Project Manager includes the word “manage.” In Agile environments, teams are self-managing. No one tells them what to do. Scrum Master, on the other hand, includes the word “master.” What are Scrum Masters masters of? They are masters of Scrum. A Scrum Master wholeheartedly believes the statements in the Agile Manifesto and the framework established by the Scrum Guide. The role involves imbuing these concepts on the team, leaders of your organization, and anyone else who supports your project.
- Adopt and embrace the agile mindset
Agile is not a thing you do. Instead, it is a way of thinking that welcomes change. Agile also recognizes that our work is complex, and there are more unknowns than there are knowns.
I will admit that I was resistant when Agile first came to my company. I wanted to know everything up front, and getting comfortable with not knowing is not easy. But to be successful in this role, it’s what you must do – take a leap of faith. You need to trust your team to figure out how to do the work and let them do it. Your job is to empower them to make decisions and allow them to fail, learn from their mistakes, and move on.
So, read the Agile Manifesto, read the Scrum Guide. Then, go back and reread them until you correctly understand what they mean. As agilists, we value the things on the left more than those on the right:
| Individuals and interactions | Processes and tools |
| Working product | Comprehensive documentation |
| Customer collaboration | Contract negotiation |
| Responding to change | Following a plan |
- Get some formal or informal training
While reading the Agile Manifesto and Scrum Guide is a good start, it’s probably not enough to master the art of Scrum. I highly recommend getting either formal, instructor-led training or doing personal learning. There are numerous classes and courses you can take to help you gain a more in-depth understanding of Scrum itself and your role as a Scrum Master.
Many courses can prepare you for a Scrum Master certification. Having a recognized designation will prove that you can study and take an exam but won’t demonstrate successfully operating in the role. Treat the courses as foundational knowledge, remembering that you learn more by doing than by reading.
- Find a mentor
When I first transitioned from a technologist to a Business Analyst, I was lucky enough to have a fantastic mentor, Richard Payne. He was a contract Project Manager working for my company, and he taught me the first lessons about being a BA. I still remember what he taught me to this day.
Anytime someone switches into a new role, it’s always helpful to have someone else who has done it before guiding you. You don’t have to experience all the hard lessons by facing them yourself. Take the wisdom of a mentor to help you avoid pitfalls and seek their advice when you doubt yourself or have questions.
- Shadow another Scrum Master and their team
Observation, or job shadowing, is another excellent method to learn the ways of Scrum; this is a classic Business Analysis technique. There are a couple of different ways to do observation. One is “passive,” and the other is “active.”
Passive observation involves acting as a silent observer. You watch what other people do without getting involved or asking any questions. Observation is a great first step in understanding how Scrum works.
With active observation, you may interject and ask questions and might temporarily be part of the team so you can practice as you learn. With either method, you can watch how the different events happen, listen to team members communicate, and learn how to operate as a leader who serves the team. By having this experience, you can model your behavior after what you saw.
- Learn how to plan in an adaptive fashion rather than a predictive one
Predictive planning presupposes that you know everything in advance. Unfortunately, with today’s complexity, this is rarely the best approach. Adaptive planning (also known as rolling wave planning) allows you to plan in a more flexible way, which involves high-level planning and more granular planning as items get closer to being worked on. At regular intervals, you revisit the plan and make any adjustments based on new information. The immediate plan is detailed enough to do the work, whereas the high-level plan won’t contain many details. This approach allows you to respond to change rather than resist it.
- Get comfortable with ambiguity
If you want to be successful as a Scrum Master, you had better get used to not knowing everything and get comfortable with ambiguity. When I first transitioned to Scrum, this was a struggle for me. I spent the first portion of my career doing things the waterfall way, and I was uncomfortable not knowing where I was going. After giving Scrum a chance, I realized that it’s a better way of working on most types of projects and that it’s rare that you would have all the answers upfront, anyway.
- Understand that your schedule and budget are fixed, and scope is variable
Every traditional Project Manager knows about the triple constraint (aka the Iron Triangle) of project management. This triangle depicts the scope, schedule, and budget as three sides of a triangle, with quality in the center. When one side expands, another has to shrink. In waterfall, the scope informs the timeline and the cost, whereas this concept is reversed in agile.
The price and schedule are fixed within an agile context, and the scope is variable. By having a flexible scope, the Product Owner can prioritize the most important and valuable items first, so the value can be delivered to customers more quickly. This is often a difficult concept for people to understand, in my experience. If you “get” this, you’re more likely to be able to make the switch from being an old-school Project Manager.
- Learn how to lead your team by serving them
Scrum Masters are leaders, but they’re leaders who serve their team. Project Managers tend to be more dictatorial, which won’t fly in Agile. As a Scrum Master, your responsibilities include ensuring that the Scrum values and principles are being lived, giving the team everything they need to succeed, facilitating Scrum events, removing any impediments, and protecting your team from outside interference. Instead of directing your team, you lead them by example.
Conclusion
If you want to leap from Project Manager to Scrum Master, you can start by following the advice in this blog. It’s not an easy transition to make; the most important thing is to approach it with an open mind and be willing to learn new ways of working.
Now, it’s your turn. Were you once a PM who has become a Scrum Master? How was the experience for you? What advice would you give to others who want to make the same transition? Let me know in the comments below!