Getting away from the need to internalize project decisions and problems, and instead being the conduit of such things (the “passive conduit”) from the team to the right people can be an effective practice, but on most projects, the responsibility doesn’t stop until action is taken on all of these things. The Agile PM - especially in organizations where Agile is new - often also fills the role of ‘obstacle remover’ and ‘change agent’ and should do whatever will help the group understand how they can operate differently to succeed. more »

My experience is predominantly within large, Fortune-class companies.  It is possible that many of my observations apply on to organizations that have grown to tens of thousands of people over many, many years.  I do not know if many of the same ailments apply to smaller companies – although with the exception of the odd start-up, I suspect that the same commitment-issues plague us all.  more »

“It is only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything” - Tyler Durden

This statement (from a popular movie, Fight Club, of all places) has been incredibly valuable in my transition to (and growth as) an Agile project manager, scrum master, and coach over the years.

Successfully moving to Agile is very much about abandoning rules and practices that were made to deal with limitations of the past. In the past, as a project manager on traditional projects, in addition to “management” activities, I had to make decisions- sometimes about technology, or product, or schedule, or other. The burden placed on project managers in many large organizations is tremendous. Ironic that the project manager is often the person in the worst position to make these decisions - usually without reporting authority of her/his teams, without the most domain expertise (when compared to business sponsors, for example) or technical expertise, etc. more »