I find it ironic that the title of the book that launched Scrum into the mainstream was titled “Agile Project Management Using Scrum” because in my experience, Project Managers and Scrum mix like oil and water.

I was a PM for about a dozen years until I read that book and realized that everything I had been doing until that point needed to change (except for a few things that were actually Agile and Scrum-like). I was very good at my job. I escalated my skills to the point where I was in charge of a major many millions of dollars portfolio of work as a Program Manager. However, once I read that book, my world was forever changed, and I have never looked back.

Why are PMs so antithetical to Scrum? For the simple reason that a PM is born to command and control a team to get the job done. A Project Manager is the very definition of a command and control role, one with limited power and unlimited responsibility. The PM is the center of the project universe, and all things must flow through their control. They command because they have to (in a typical waterfall scenario this is demanded of them), and while I hold my former associates in high regard as people, when it comes to Scrum, they are the very last thing you would want to impose upon a team in any capacity.

I have only ever seen one scenario where a PM type role was of value and that was to track project financials and do some basic admin work, but that is a sliver of a PM’s responsibilities and could be more easily tasked to a Scrum Master or Product Owner or just assigned to a Project Administrator or Coordinator role if you really feel you must.

I have seen many large organizations attempt to integrate Project Managers onto teams or get them to fly around teams on larger scaled initiatives to coordinate dependencies or communicate status, and I can tell you that they always, without exception, made things worse instead of better. The same can be said for former PMs that take on the role of Scrum Master. They are generally terrible at it. They stick to their PM ways and just become passive aggressive in their command and control behavior. I feel for them. I really do. I was once just like them and saw the Scrum light. To me, it was a beacon of reason and opportunity. It was a revelation, but to others it signals the death of their jobs, as it should if an organization is truly going to embrace Scrum - there is no role for PMs on or around a Scrum team. Luckily for them, Waterfall will never go away entirely. It still has its applications, and, of course, the rest of the world is slow to learn the lessons of Scrum outside of software development, so there will be ample opportunities for PMs to ply their trade for many years to come. I do not however advocate getting into to the field now as a PM. You are watching the decline of the old way of getting work done and the ascension of a number of new ways (Scrum and Kanban for two but there are many more). None of the new ways needs a command and control center any longer and that is a fact to me as much as gravity.