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Showing posts with label Project Manager. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Project Manager. Show all posts

Sunday, February 11, 2018

DevOps Basics - Communication & Ownership

I saw this pic on a slide in an online tutorials about DevOps, and it immediately caught my attention, hey! I recognize this!
How common is it to throw the stuff over the wall....but wait! we do take ownership of the 'stuff with us', but probably when done with 'our part', we tend to pass it over without too much of deliberation, or concern, or knowledge about it thereafter.
(image courtesy udacity.com)

...and what if the end user (customer) throws is back too!?...remember when that happened to you last time?...to me that happened just last week.

If I go back few years, I have had stuff thrown over to me and having no clue what to do with it, and how to deal with the situation, task or whatever, and I recall having done this myself (hey unintentional! OK :P), and stuff happens, and the question is - can it be avoided....Yes!, of course.

Communication is the key! To some it comes with ease, while for few others it is just ain't easy. Just like everything else, it takes practice, more practice and little courage and I heard beer works great too :D !
Ownership and a bit of attitude to pick up and fix the stuff! Some of us might think that "ownership" means more actions on oneself, but in my opinion ownership gives you more choices to act, and better control over any situation.
...and Break the silos!...is it same as communication?...well I think it is more about those 'virtual' walls we usually have created, than 'communication;...what say? Silos could exist between two people sitting next to each other, who talk so often. It is like being a bird in 'cage without walls'. Sorry I just over-complicated the definition of silos :P
We all love to get the things done, no one wants to be on team that has customer throwing stuff back at them, is n't it?, but working in silos is just so convenient at times, people just find it easy to 'throw over the wall'.
Enough, I am done! Going back to my next slide...

Monday, March 25, 2013

Is Scrum Master a Project Manager in Agile Scrum?

The straight answer to that would be 'no' - and I guess everyone who has spent 30-40hrs learning Agile Scrum would know this short answer, but let's understand why behind it and that is really important.

OK, lets understand why these two roles are NOT same -
1) Agile teams are self-organizing teams, so if you are PMI Project Management guru (aka PMP) you would know - Project Manager spends lots of time and energy in organizing these resources (developers, testers, analysts etc, and their tasks etc) so by definition, these activities are no more required (to a greater extent), so Scrum Master is not supposed to (and may not even know how to...) do resource management. Scrum Master is like a coach in Scrum Team not manager.

2) Scrum Master (also explained as 'servant-leader' in scrum guides) - is there to do specific job(s) - ensure scrum rules/practices are being followed, remove impediments, (and keep chickens (sounds unfamiliar? - read this) away from team but keep them happy). Project Manager on other hand is assumed to be master of all these - so this is actually similarity between these two roles - but Project Manager is expected to anyways be master of all these (e.g. ensure project management practices are being followed, remove hurdles/blockers, keep chickens happy...), but this role carries lot of other responsibilities as well, than just that.

3) Ever heard of WBS, estimation, gantt charts, critical path analysis? - that's what we don't do in Agile Scrum, but on other hand in waterfall, all these are termed as 'most important tasks for a project manager', and hence a Project Manager is different from Scrum Master. Even estimation is done by developers in consultation with Product Owner, and Scrum Master has little role to play there.

So in nutshell, the role of Project Manager is divided is Agile Scrum, and the tasks are distributed (by nature of Scrum), among all members of Scrum Team.

Further reading - I strongly recommend you to read a short and simple (16 pages) Agile Scrum Guide by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland.