I find that organizations often confuse the role of a project manager and an agile coach. It happens often enough that I talk about it a lot.
Here’s another way I’ve been thinking about it.
Let’s say your kid doesn’t do their homework.
A project manager might point to their RACI to demonstrate that the kid is responsible for doing their homework. They might go to their RAID log to see how they’d decided to respond to the situation at the start of the kid doing homework. They’d determine if the failure happened at the homework’s critical path. Maybe assign more resources to it. They’d follow their comms plan for communicating the miss. Write up a process. And do an RCA of what happened.
An agile coach might let the kid fail the homework. Ask what they learned. And how they’ll improve next time.
Project managers are expected to “drive,” “execute,” “lead,” and “manage.”
Agile coaches are there to “observe,” “facilitate,” and “coach.”
Imagine an organization’s surprise when they hire an agile coach or scrum master expecting them to keep everyone in line and track deadlines, create processes, and write documentation.
They hired them to ensure the train continues running full speed ahead.
And instead, that person slows the train down. Asks questions. Invites reflection. Lets teams make mistakes. And learn from them.
That doesn’t always go over very well.
While I have, of course, exaggerated the responses of a project manager and agile coach, it is still important to know the differences in philosophy and approach to each. And, wherever you work, to know what you’re getting into.
If you’re hiring, do your homework on what role you actually want.
If you’re a jobseeker, do your homework on what your organization expects you to be.
Photo by Santi Vedrí on Unsplash