A role such as that of a project manager doesn’t exist in Scrum. But, in the organization there are project managers. Then, what is the role of the project manager in the event of the team migrating to Scrum. Well this question has been asked so many times, however the answers are different and are conflicting.
Let’s take up an example to understand this. Mike is a Project Manager and his project is about to migrate to Scrum. From a very long time, Mike is working as a manager in his career. Mike has respected his team mates and trusted them to be responsible about their jobs. His ideology about the finest approach to obtain the outcomes is to develop a team of exceedingly driven professionals, set goals, take initiatives and ensure all needed resources towards their work are there without obstacles. The team looks up to Mike if they have any problems or concerns, as they feel quite at ease intimating project estimates to him because of no “Boss pressure”. He is always careful of their requirements with high importance. It has always been Mike’s goal to enable and support effective communication, prevent and resolve clashes, eliminate obstacles, and make certain maximum prominence into the project for all the involved stakeholders.
Would Mike be a good Scrum Master for his team? Yes, he will be a good Scrum Master.
The product owner is equally vital as the Scrum Master. In the absence of an effective and efficient product owner, the project is unlikely to succeed. Preferably the role of product owner should be undertaken by the client, who isn’t always plausible or the client is very engrossed with something that, though formally it is the product owner but whom always finds availability at all times to the team a major inability.
In this situation, there is a necessity for a product owner, or substitution product owner, indigenous to the team. A likely candidate can be the project manager. Interacting and working with numerous stakeholders to convert an incessant flow of change requests into a prioritized list is something the project manager can fare well as he would have prior experience on that.
