“You are an experienced project manager who is certified PMP and PRINCE2-Practitioner. You are also a certified scrum master and practitioner. Isn’t this contradicting?”
“Agile doesn’t want project managers where as you are a certified PMP! Do you think you can be a good scrum master or scrum coach?”
I have come across such questions many times.
Now a days there is a big fuss around agile and especially scrum. Most of the times organization “A” wants to do scrum because organization B is doing it! J So, hiring an experienced scrum coach has also become “a trendy thing” now a days! Naturally organizations will want to interview the aspiring coaches before they offer you this job. Most of the times, the person who will interview you will happen to be the “traditional PM”. He likes to see PMP in your resume. But he has heard many a times that agile doesn’t need managers! So he is skeptical to see a profile who has been a PMP and claims to be a scrum coach! Nothing wrong….
Well, I think PMBOK® has never advocated waterfall way of doing projects! Nowhere in PMBOK® is it mentioned that we should have BIG upfront plans. Nowhere in PMBOK® is it mentioned that we should capture all requirements upfront! So, this school of thoughts that claims that PMP means traditional waterfall way of doing projects is a BIG MYTH, in my opinion!
In fact PMBOK® has clearly mentioned that “complex nature of project management requires use of repeated feedback loops. As project characteristics are understood, significant changes occurring throughout project life cycle trigger a need to revisit planning and even initiation of project many times.” It in fact prescribes progressive detailing of plans, indicating that planning and documentation are iterative and on-going. (Refer page 55: section 3.4: 1st paragraph of PMBOK®)
“Progressive elaboration” has been mentioned in PMBOK® multiple times. For instance –
- Clarifying and planning scope (process 5.4: page 131: 2nd paragraph)
- Scheduling (process 6.22.2: page 152)
Concept of product breakdown and WBS in PMBOK® is nothing but visualizing epics, features and stories! It does mention that decomposition needs to happen progressively. It does talk about requirements prioritization (section 5.1.3.2 and section 5.2.2.4). Also, PMBOK® nowhere prescribes command and control mindset of PM!
In fact, on the other hand, I think PMBOK® and hence PMP has been advocating the same stuff which has been a big fuss now a days, which is called by different names like scrum, XP, agile, etc.
One has to understand and appreciate that PMBOK® is a generic PM framework. It isn’t specific to any industry, domain. Whereas, scrum, XP, etc, have originated from software industry. If agile, as a framework, has to mature and become generic enough for any other industry to adopt it, then it will end up being as generic as PMBOK®!
I believe that scrum (or any agile method) forces you to follow what is stated or prescribed in PMBOK®. For instance, it forces you to have a WBS (epics, stories in PB), elaborate requirements progressively (3 C’s of stories), it forces you to capture and update organizational process assets (lessons learnt) and keep revisiting your plans and keep correcting them (sprint cycles with planning and retrospectives complementing each other).
So, I think this confusion about scrum vs PMBOK® is mainly due to superficial awareness of both the scrum and PMBOK®! Anyone who will study them carefully, will realize that scrum actually is a nice fusion of how PMBOK® should have been practiced in reality! Traditionally we have never followed PMBOK® in true spirit! But then people criticize it saying “it’s just a theory”!
Well, nothing is as practical as theory! Any theory originates from practical experiences only! You need theories because they are teachable, repeatable. And scrum is a practical PMBOK®! And hence I chose to call this scrum-confusion as ScrumFusion J And I hope I will be able to contribute a little to clear this confusion in near future!