Project Manager / Scrum Master / Agile Coach Career Path

DORA LUZ Mejia CEO| IT Explore Envigado, Antioquia, Colombia

I am working on differentiate the career path for these 3 roles, I appreciate if you can give me some feedback about each one . My main points about are

Project Manager. The basic career path is differentiate the projects that I can give to different PM leval. I have junior and senior PMs and I assign projects acoording to complexity , butget and business Impact. On the other hand I have a career step for program manager and portfolio manager. At the top of this level I can draw aPMO Leader/Director for those who wants this path. Some PM are good candidates for Functional areas and strategic areas in the business.

Agile Coach. I di not find any career path for this role in the organization. this role helps the organization to adop different frameworks and work practices to align the organization to an agile environment. Once in an agile coach function I am not finding any career path.

Scrum Master. Usually they want to continuo being facilitator and having funtions in teams to develop and helps in the team maturity level. I am not finding this role a good candidate for managers or PM. So I only have the choice to offer them some Agile coach positions.

do you have others ideas about the career path for them?

Posted: Jul 2, 2019 10:36 PM

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DORA LUZ Mejia CEO| IT Explore Envigado, Antioquia, Colombia

Jul 08, 2019 9:10 AM

Replying to Wade Harshman

...

Also, be careful not to think of career paths as a ladder that must be climbed in order to succeed. A project manager can have a very good career and never manage a PMO. Indeed, there are some very successful project managers who manage 1 large project at a time, and a common PMO role would be a step backwards in their career.

Similarly, I know some scrum masters who have been scrum masters for decades. They are very good at their jobs and they work with 1 team or 1 product at a time, and they have no need to change job titles. Some scrum masters will go on to train other scrum masters or become agile coaches, but not all of them have this desire. Also, not all agile coaches start as scrum masters, they could come from a different background or another framework.

And with the nature of change, there may yet be a new role that attracts all of these people in the coming years.

Out of curiosity, why do you ask? Are you looking to advance your own career, or are you creating a career map for another pupose?

thanks for your great contribution about.
I am reviewing the current roles to define if we need to integrate or define a career path for each of them.
I am not big fan of having the 3 roles , and the discussion about the competences franmework is very interesing to try to evaluate the situation around the competences level.

Posted: Jul 8, 2019 8:20 PM

Wade Harshman Scrum Master| GDIT Indianapolis, In, United States

Oh, so these are career paths internal to your organization? Hmm... that could be tricky. Many Agile Coaches are external consultants, so there really wouldn't be a career path for them in a business unless it's a consulting business... and then the move would basically be a senior coach or maybe a practice lead type position. They can always make a more abrupt career change, of course. This would depend a lot on what your organization does, but I can't think of a clear "career path" for coaches.

Similarly, Scrum Masters wouldn't normally feed directly into another type of position. Your organization might distinguish between junior and senior scrum masters, but they're not typically up for promotion into new positions unless, as before, we're talking about practice leads or something similar. If you have very good scrum masters that have outgrown their positions, they're probably going to move on to a higher paying scrum master positions at another company, or they're going to move towards enterprise level coaching or scrum training.

I really think Project Managers can move in a lot of various career paths, depending on their backgrounds and skill sets. The move to program or portfolio manager can be a good promotion, but we have to beware of career myopia. (This could be said of the coaches and scrum masters as well.)

Posted: Jul 9, 2019 12:43 PM (Updated by author: Jul 9, 2019 12:45 PM)

Thomas Walenta Global Project Economy Expert Hackenheim, Germany

For me it’s like comparing a cherry with a fruit basket. To achieve the PMI PMP certificate you need at least 3 years of experience and on average 4 weeks of individual learning effort. And then you have just the drivers license.

Compare that with the efforts of getting the CSM or similar certificates, even if you include a facilitator course.

With PMP you may get a broad view on many topics, with scrum master you may be enabled to run a team.

Posted: Jul 9, 2019 1:38 PM

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Project Manager / Scrum Master / Agile Coach Career Path

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