And again you are mixing pears and apples .
If you think project management;
you need a project manager which implies warterfall, unless the project âmanagementâ is âactingâ as a Product owner, in which case we might fall back to somehow resemble agile, but its just a facade, as the team will have very clear specs of what to do, and when to do it, and how to do it (frameworks like S.A.F.E. are exploiting this facade very well).
Agile is not project management; at most its âwork executionâ (and already that is quite borderline), cause an agile workteam does not have a single delivery, or a date of start / end of work as project has, but rather a constant flow of value generation / deliverablesâŚand this via a set of decisions taken from within the team, not given from outside. Itâs a very different approach. Scrum is a framework to work in an agile way, but it has really nothing to do with project management. In fact, you have the sprints for constant delivery of value, you have the team implementing the user stories (defined by the PO and refined by the team), based on the needs the team sees fit, in the timings the team thinks it is right.
So its like not project management
This is the difference between âdoingâ agile, and âsayingâ to be agile. Itâs not agile to âcut cornersâ by specifying clearly how to do things;
itâs not agile to have very written down (and handed over from the outside) âspecificationsâ; itâs not agile to âtell people in the team what to do so they can do itâ.
These are all âconstraintsâ in the world of agile. In agile, the team is the main reference point and sole responsible for the generation of value, based on the wishes of the Product Owner (the real one),
the best way they see fit, with the means they think will allow them to succeed the best in the shortest time possible (usually a sprint span)
Ive been in teams who have done it wrong, and I have had the luck to be in few teams (two) who almost did it right. I can tell you, the outcome differs substantially between the two experiences.
Thatâs why I always laugh when people talk about âagile as project managementâ; it does not sit nor in heaven or on earth, as itâs like night and day
But, dont take it as given from my words - im just a software developer