Project Managers role in an agile environment

First of all, some Agile based methods like DSDM has the project manager role explicit defined into it. Second, I have the opportunity to take a one week workshop with Sutherland regarding his new word named "The Art Of Doing Things Half Of Time" which is Scrum based and he talk in theory and practice how project management is performed into Scrum. But you are talking about environments and Agile is nothing to be with methods or process. Agile is a practice or way of thinking and behave so the important thing is the environment. key is to understand what a project manager really is. With that on mind you can perform the role into any type of approach you take. For example, in my actual work place, we have five life cycles defined based on predictive and adaptive models plus we use Scrum and DSDM. The same person is assigned at the same time to perform project/program management activities inside initiatives that running using different approaches.

I fully agree with Sergio’s feedback.

I don't see the issue with project managers in an Agile environment. Managing a project is not synonymous with managing the development team.

The Scrum Master/Agile Lead/Coach's focus is "within" (i.e. the pod or pods they are supporting). The PM's role in a project following an agile or adaptive approach with qualified SMs in place is more on "without" (e.g. stakeholder engagement, financial management, integration management, overall integrated schedule management).

On a small, low complexity project, a PM and SM role can be performed by the same individual but this won't work as complexity and scale increases.

Kiron

Operative planning is delegated to the development team. The role of the PM (especially in bigger complex projects) switches to the "without" as highligted by Kiron. In such envrionment the PM role still makes sense with focus on strategic planning level and servant leadership for the team.