Is Agile Undermining the Project Manager Role?

Sachin Dhaygude, a trainer and consultant in Project Management and Agile Methodologies, brings 15 years of work experience in the IT industry. He has worked with Fortune 500 IT services provider organizations like Cognizant Technology Solutions, as well as IT product organizations like SunGard.

  Agile   Governance   Scrum  

PMI defines project management as the ”application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements.” Let’s have a closer look at how a project is managed. Every project is usually broken down into smaller phases to make it more manageable (divide and rule). The project’s phases will depend on the domain (e.g., a construction project may have project lifecycle phases different than a software development project). However, each of these phases (and the entire project) will go through the same project management lifecycle.

For instance, a software development project may have phases as shown in this picture. Requirements, design as well as any phase will be initiated, planned, executed, monitored and closed. Irrespective of phases and domain, these “project management lifecycle” stages remain applicable.

At the same time, each of these phases (requirement, design or any phase) will also have scope, time, cost, quality, resources, communication, risk, stakeholders and vendors. To add to the complexity, the project management lifecycle stages will also interface with each of these areas--planning will be done for each of scope, time, cost, quality, resources, communication, etc. (and monitoring will also be done for each them).

Why is a Project Manager Needed?
You can now see how…

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.