What is the difference between a Scrum Master and a Project Manager?
A Scrum Master is
- An Influential Leader
- A change agent
- A role and not a designation
- Who do not use command and control
- A master facilitator of Scrum Ceremonies
- A servant leader – helps team to self-organize and insulates from distractions.
- A bulldozer of team impediments
- A mirror to the team
- One who promotes team work and collaboration
- A Scrum Champion and coach to the team.
- Who helps team members resolve their own conflicts
- Who think ahead of the team into the future coming work
- Who stay abreast of Agile developments in tools, technologies, and techniques the Team is using
- Who coordinates with external teams
- Who ask for management help when team needs it.
- A timekeeper of all Scrum Ceremonies.
- Who makes information radiators
- Who actively coordinates with all stakeholders of the project
- One who is a die-hard Agile learner
- One who gives frequent feedback to the team.
- One who engage constantly with other Scrum Masters through Community of Practice
- One who ensure the constant flow of business value to the customer.
- One who helps team in release planning
- One who keeps team metrics up to date.
- One who helps team to maintain their Scrum tools.
A Project Manager is
- An authoritative individual
- A formal hierarchical designation in an organization structure
- Who decides what work needs to be done
- Who assigns the work to the team
- Who counts on individual contribution
- Who keeps track of what everyone on the team is doing
- Who make commitments to management about how much Team can do by a certain date
- Who do a weekly/daily status meeting
- Who send weekly status report to the management
- Who plan training and other skills development for Team-members
- Who do active planning of resources, budgets, costs and schedules.
- Who do career-development and career planning for his/her direct reports
- Who do performance appraisals
- Who recruit, interview and hire new Team-members
- Who makes lay off decisions
- Who makes procurement decisions
- Who is responsible and accountable for the outcome of the project.
- Who keeps all the project related artifacts up to date.