How Scrum methods have affected the IT PM role

The world has moved away from waterfall to agile. The need for extensive planning and estimation has given way to games like planning poker. IT Infrastructure is available at the click of a button on the cloud. Developers expect their supervisor to be a mentor or a guide or a facilitator than being a planner and tracker.

Today’s PM tools provide extensive capabilities for scheduling (including intelligent planning), risk management, cost estimation, time and expense tracking, automated status reporting, and much more automation.

A method like “Scrum” has even eliminated the role of “Project Manager”.

Our clients and organizations find little value in the activities that we PM’s have been performing, such as creating WBS, work allocation, tracking and reporting. These are no longer considered worth a senior professional’s time.

Does this all indicate an eventuality which we PM’s are unwilling to accept in public – The death of IT project manager?

So what do we Project Managers’ do?

What clients are looking for is someone who takes complete accountability for developing solutions for them. The person must understand the domain, must manage stakeholders, manage requirements, and manage the project.

That’s in a nutshell, the “Product Manager”.

Do share your views.