AA118 - Scrum Master to Project Manager Career Transition

If you were a scrum master agile coach,, and maybe you're out of a job, maybe you've been out of a job for a little while and you see all these project manager positions and you're looking at them wondering what are the differences? And you have a lot of questions. We're gonna talk through that in this podcast. Yep. This is the podcast for you. So stay tuned. A couple podcasts ago, we had our favorite special mystery guest on, and Trisha, who's a product manager, and we talked to our favorite special mystery guest about why they should move from being a scrum master into being a product manager. And, on that podcast, I made a statement that in the next maybe five to 10 years, I'd see the positions, available to Scrum Masters and Agile coaches declining. And then, it'll be much more difficult to get a job. So where are all those people going to go? That are kind of getting pushed out I mean, you and I know there's positions now that are labeled Scrum Master that when you actually read them, they're obviously a relabeled project manager. So maybe we'll talk about that too, but, maybe some people are looking at project management and they don't know what the real difference is. They've never had, had actually sat down with a project manager to talk about so maybe we'll, we'll work through some of that today. Yeah, that sounds good. As a scrum master, when you think about a project manager role assuming you've never been a project manager before you even consider applying for a position like that mm-hmm. What, what's the first thing that comes to mind? For me it's the word manager is in the title. So immediately you think this is a management type of role whereas scrum master, there's no word like manager in there. Yeah. So like immediately you start to think about, well, if this is a management role, what am I managing? Obviously the project, but what does, what does that entail? And then you start looking into some of the things that you see in the the job description when they talk about it, assuming it's a legit job description and not one that's simply been copy pasted. Yeah. You, you'll see things like Finances or budgeting you know, procurement, risk management. There are so many different things. What the project managers learn from PMI as project management techniques involve all these creation of all these plans. Right? Right. And so one such plan is the project management plan, which believe it or not, most people simply. Take to mean the Gantt chart. Mm-hmm. But PMI differentiates that. They, they say a project management plan is really a con a bundle of a bunch of different subsidiary plans is the term they use, right? Like resource management, time management, risk management procurement, right? All of these little plans that they talk about, subsidiary, they all add up to what they call project management planning. Yeah. Of which, by the way, one little component is schedule. Mm-hmm. And that's what people often mistake for the project plan. Yeah. I e a Gantt chart, that's just one component. So if you're a scrum master, that's the first thing to kind of get to grips with. You have to come up with all these plans. Mm-hmm. Right. That's a lot more work than you anticipated probably. Cuz as a scrum master, you didn't have to do that. Mm-hmm. And certainly at the very minimum, you as a scrum master are unlikely to have had to come up with a project budget. Chances are a budget was done by somebody else. Well, there's gonna be a lot of gaps I would expect so may maybe we hit some of those gaps. GA gaps positive and negative. Both. There'll be, there'll be pros and cons in here that we can highlight. Yeah. In, in the spirit of arguing Agile. I kind of wanted to dig into my off-the-cuff statement about the position being in decline. Cause I could if we're, if we're, again, if we're in the spirit of arguing agile let's dissect that for a second because I, I did absolutely zero research. This is just my gut feeling. And then, and then we said, we, and we said that in the, Podcast with Trisha, where Jessica challenged us, is like, well, you're not hearing any kind of signal. Like what, what do you like, where are you getting the numbers about position decline and stuff from? Like, are you just feeling pulling it outta the air? Cause that's what you feel. And Trisha's example was something along the lines of like, well every company that I work at that's a small company, like somebody plays a role as a scrum master that only the biggest, a big companies hire Scrum Masters, and then how many times do the big companies get it right or they're where they're not actually looking for a project manager named Scrum Masters, so they can tick a box. They actually want to delegate that leadership to a team and they bring on the correct type of position to do that. Like, so, so like, it wasn't looking good the more we dug into it, so we had a good back and forth on that podcast. So I guess the opening question is, do you think that the positions, position positions or in declining, you think Scrum master Agile coach are in different stages, or are they kind of the same? What do you think? What I've seen lately is a an elevation of the scrum master role into more of a team coach. So now you know, do you need an agile coach? Because we have a scrum master and they're a team coach and they can coach, and then the scrum guide, the latest revision of it so that the scrum master should coach the organization, the product people, et cetera. So then what's the Agile coach doing? Right? So what I'm seeing is more Scrum masters being asked to do what originally was in the realm of. The agile coaches domain. Mm-hmm. Right? So that, that's what I'm seeing as a trend. However, I'm also speaking to these people day in, day out. I'm also seeing a struggle there because the Scrum masters do not know how to coach the organization. Right. You don't just simply. Get that one day because Scrum guide came out and said you should do that. Yeah. So I am seeing that. I'm also coming back to the original point about project management. I'm seeing some project managers come up and struggle on the, on the empathy side. Right. For, for teams and letting the teams become autonomous come up with the how themselves, because if you're a traditional project manager, you're used to creating a schedule for the team. You're used to creating what they call work breakdown packages. Yeah. So you take a piece of functionality, say, this is what you're working on. So as a project manager, I would come to you, Brian, as a team member and say, Hey, Brian, I've worked out a work breakdown package for you, here's what it looks like. And You know, you'll deliver this by the end of July. Yeah. And you look at me and say, are you crazy? You've never done this work before. There's no way it can be done by the end of July. And I have a ton of questions about it to begin with, right? In, in practice. What I'm seeing though, this is interesting, this little bit next, what I'm seeing is project managers. Are starting to grapple with this. Because they read about agile ways of working, scrum, et cetera, and they're having to think about that and say, well, maybe I'm not the right person to come up with this stuff and dictate to the team. Sure. But what do I do in instead? Because remember, they didn't get the scrum master training that Scrum master would've. Got right. Psm, csm, whatever it is. They didn't get that necessarily. What, what happened instead is they were simply given a new title. Yeah. So in our new org reorg you, Mr. Project manager, miss project manager, you are now a Scrum master. But don't worry, there's no pay cuts or anything, even though the word manager's gone mm-hmm. From your title. That's a long way to say there's a real mishmash out there. So coming back to the, the original premise of. A scrum master who's been out of work for a bit, should they consider Right? I, I think we're just starting to scratch the surface. You gotta run into these issues and you need to kind of work through that for yourself because it's different for everyone. And see if being a project manager and all of the stuff that's and all that, that it, it entails, is that for you? Right. Are you comfortable working out? Project finances. Are you comfortable dealing with all these subsidiary plans? Are you comfortable working with. Contractors, right? So if you're comfortable with all of those things, you'll, you'll be fine. If you're not, and you're more focused on letting the team build up and building trust and, and getting teams to perform their best, I, you may struggle a little. Yeah. I kind of was thinking we'd go down this road on the podcast a little bit later, to be honest. Okay., since you're here now I, one of the reasons that I was that I suggested that the position was in decline or not, which I'm not sure, I'm not sure if I got your answer on that, is I think that there are some really, really great scrum masters out there. Like there, there are scrum masters that I watch, do their work and move through the organization and build real solid ties with people and I see them work and because I'm me and I'm comparing myself to the way they work, I'm like, oh my goodness. I'm like, I'm, I'm years away from. Like achieving that level of effectiveness as a scrum master, that they can just like forge those interpersonal relationships and like shortcut a lot of the teams working together and the type of scrum master that does like a large room facilitation where they are getting people up out of their chairs and moving around and getting people to laugh and, you know what I mean? By the end of the training or the end of the day or whatever, they, they come out a, a small group that is small, much stronger. Interpersonal ties as a group, right? Because of the individual's facilitation skills that was facilitating the retrospective or planning session or whatever it was, right? So if you're gonna draw down the market, Let's say we have a 50% reduction in jobs over the next 10 years, even 50%. Okay. So like, and what I'm thinking is the, those people who are absolutely excellent and have the strong facilitation and communication skills, What I think of is like the most advanced skill, it's gonna be difficult to compete with people that have those skills. I mean, I guess you could say like, we'll just learn to communicate better and learn how to be a people person. I, I guess, Like that's a, that's a, that's not, that's not useful. Like it's, yeah. I bring that up because it was something you said earlier that, that made me think, Hey, what makes you a really good project manager? Yeah. Doesn't necessarily make you a really good scrum master. And then vice versa, you know? Yes. And the opposite direction applies as well. So I, when you were, when you were talking, I was thinking to myself, boy is it possible to take one of these project managers and then make them somehow develop some kind of curriculum or training or something that helps them adjust into being an excellent scrum master? You know, maybe they do. Some of the planning, cause the, all the, all the, the planning that you got, that you were talking about, we'll get into that a little bit later in this podcast. All that high level planning is useful. Planning, like the four letter word plan. Mm-hmm. Like the, the super deep, low level planning to build all of the whatever and then build all of this and then build all of that and then ship nothing. Right? That, that four letter plan word that I'm not talking about, that I'm talking about this high level stuff that connects you, you and your teams to the business via plans. The project managers know how to do that. The scrum masters generally don't know how to do that, but if there's a way I can teach somebody all those high level skills, all those planning skills, and then teach them the scrum master skill set as well? I don't know. Is there a path there? I don't, I, I don't know. That's kind of where I'm going in my, because the, the type, the type of person that needs a plan for every situation. It's gonna be a bit of an adjustment to moving over into this world where you basically could, could be asked to operate with no plan. Yeah, I, I agree with that. I think if you're a traditional project manager moving into the scrum master realm, Dealing with uncertainty and, and accepting levels uncertainty. Yeah. That's gonna be a challenge for you. Yeah. Because you're not used to that, right? You're used to planning things out and then you're used to basically executing to that plan. So the unknowns that's gonna be the discomfort for somebody who comes that direction, which someone going the other way is going to grapple with differently, right? They're gonna say, well, we don't need a plan. We'll figure it out, as we go. Yeah, maybe, I mean maybe, but I, I think of the, I have to, I have to not think of like obstinate, like stereotypical project managers. I have to think of like the actual really good project managers that I have worked with who are communicating with external vendors and communicating with partners and, you know what I mean, partner organizations Yeah. And stuff like that. They are very good at tracking things down and, and at, at setting expectations. So they would seek first to get the, all the expectations out onto the table, I would think. So maybe maybe they would have a little easier time than scrum master going in the opposite direction. I don't know. I, I'm, I'm kind of on the fence about this one. Yeah. I mean, Okay. So let me give you an example. So one might be simple things like what is the, what does the customer need? Mm-hmm. So a, a scrum master would be more akin to saying, let's figure out what they need for now for the next. Two, three sprints maybe, and we'll continue to refine that as we go forward. Yeah. That kind of mindset is harder for a traditional project manager because they're used to getting everything documented, PRDs getting them signed off. Yeah. Things like that, that there's a little adjustment there. I'm not saying it can't be done, it can't be overcome with the right training, but training's one thing, right. Shifting the mindset is another. So they have to accept that. And, and it's that uncertainty, like the customer hasn't told me everything they need because they themselves may not know. Mm-hmm. And I'm okay with that. Mm-hmm. But I have just enough to be getting on with that's just one example of where I think a traditional PM needs to adjust as they get toward becoming a scrum master. So like through, through the decline section it sounds like Om is undecided and I'm, I'm firmly in the camp of the positions being in, in decline. I could be convinced that you will still have Scrum Masters at probably the biggest organizations and then safe, if you count SAFe as agile. And, but agile coaches especially these people with really advanced facilitation skills that I was talking about, maybe they would all move into contracting and they you wouldn't have really permanent employee agile coaches. They would just basically be pools of contractors that you would call up you know, as needed. Yeah. Maybe, maybe that, maybe that's what it becomes. It becomes this temporary type of role like management consultant type of deal. I don't know. Yeah, just outsource that, that particular requirement maybe. Yeah. Yeah, that's possible until Mackenzie or whoever corners the market on that. And delivers their 70 point you know, 70 page PowerPoint deck. That's right. That's right. Did I tell you I went through a McKinsey presentation recently? No. Yeah. I went through a McKinsey presentation recently in their slide deck was really, it was a, it was, it was a thing of art there. They slack. It was slick. It wasn't the seven S's by any chance, was it? No. I can't remember what it was. Anyway, the world of management consulting. Okay. So so at the top of the podcast we said what, what are some of the differences that you look out for? If you're scrum master what might be missing from your experience, or what, what, what additional skills might you need to jump into project management? I think the first thing that jumps to mind for me is project budgeting. You know, if you're not familiar with basic accounting yeah, you really need to. Get with that. Just, you don't have to be an expert. We're not calling for CPAs here. Mm-hmm. Just simple, basic cost accounting simple terms in finance. If you do that, I think you are setting yourself up for success as a project manager. So, yeah. We talk all the time that we are gonna do an episode on budgeting. Budgeting and finance. Yes. Software, budgeting and, and finance. And you, you said cost accounting, but also in my head, in the back of my head is like, it'd be nice if you knew about throughput accounting as well. Yes. And that you could show the, and you could, you could. Talk through the difference in an informed if, if not, if not in expert manner, at least in an informed manner to say like, Hey, these are cost accounting great. It's great you got your inventory and your cost of goods, or whatever, and you know, that's fine. But also, wouldn't it be better if you had some indicators that were. Like not lagging if you had a, like a couple leading indications. Yeah. Or if you could hone in your financials as close as today so you can see a day-to-day in real time. Flow of money through your system, wouldn't that be a little better? And then as you kind of seed that in your organization and they start asking questions, maybe they do a little research on their own and come to it with their own expertise. But you're absolutely right. The tracking project costs, tracking expenses, ensuring that you stay within a particular budget. I, I would say a lot of Scrum masters probably don't even have exposure to a p and l let alone financial reporting dealing with invoices, dealing with procurement vendors and vendor tools making choices of build versus buy, stuff like that. And, and I would say this is probably a reason why a lot of agile transformations fail is you don't take this very important piece of the business into consideration. Yeah, for Scrum Masters, this is something that requires a bit of effort on your part, but it's not unassailable by any stretch. I mean, you need basic accounting. You really don't need to be an expert in finance or anything, but you do need to know concepts like, Net present value, right? Of your project. What is the what is the value of a dollar today versus three years from now when the project becomes reality? Tho those things are basic, but you need to understand them. At least you have to memorize the formula or anything like that. I mean, the, these are, there's calculators available for you but you do need to have the concepts down and. They can be learned. Mm-hmm. Just be aware that that's a gap though, in your repertoire if you're coming in from the scrum master camp. Aspiring to be a project manager. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that you mentioned before we got into this category was the, the different levels of project planning, the different levels of planning, and like, again, people here planning, they kind of like, whoa, we, we planning we do well what, just in time planning, right? Well, how do you do just in time planning when your business wants to engage in something brand new that they've never done before, and they are asking you like, well, how many people do you think will need for this? And how long do you think it'll take to spin this up? Like, how do you put any of that together as a scrum master when all of your like normal backlog management and any of that kinda stuff like is now failing you? Cuz none of this is handled in any of your trainings and Right. If you've only ever taken over teams that were already formed. And you've never had to put a team together from scratch to do something from scratch or build a product that didn't exist before. This may be a big hole in your experience and a project manager has to know how to do this. They, they've gotta be able to. Estimate a, a project scope and they've gotta be able to write detailed objectives and whatever the thing is before you write a project plan. The like a, looks like a primer version. Oh yeah. Project charter and stuff. A charter, stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That kind of stuff. Yeah, sure. Yeah. You've never done any of this before as a scrum master. You know that maybe your product people have done this stuff, but you, you certainly probably haven't. Certainly probably, I concur with that. I, I think the the art of, of coming up with a project charter mm-hmm. And the subtleties that, that go into it. If you're a scrum master, you may learn some of the techniques and then come up with, let's say a charter that says, this project will take this long and cost this amount of money. A savvy project manager on the other hand, May have a slightly different take on that. I'm not talking about the numbers. Let's say the numbers are fine. Yeah. It's the presentation, right? So a seasoned pm a project manager might say this project might take between X and Y. Mm-hmm. As opposed to this long, right? Or it may come in between X dollars and Y dollars, right? Mm-hmm. Set themselves up with a range to account for uncertainty and stuff they don't know, et cetera. Those subtleties. They come from experience largely. I mean, you read about 'em. Yes. You do them for the first time, you're probably not gonna get it right. And then you try it again. Right? So, yeah, I agree with that. I think those, those are just some of the things that you need to grapple with. Mm-hmm. Day one, I mean, the project doesn't really kick off unless you have a charter. Right. You have to have that which means you have to have your, your team already defined. You have to have scope defined, cuz that's, Included in the charter, you have to have executive sponsorship. Those executives hopefully will kick off the project for you, right? All of those things as a scrum master. You've never done that, right. Typically, yeah. Typically somebody comes in and does that kind of outside of your repertoire, right? And then you say, well, here's a scrum master. Yeah. And you know, she's your scrum master team. Go. Yeah. Right. Whereas as a project manager, you're, you're putting all that together. Mm-hmm. You're actually. Arranging for the project sponsor to come in and kick off the project for you, right? Yeah. As and when you're, like I said when you're a scrum master and you enter, like you've, all of those activities have happened around you, right? And you've entered because of those activities. So, if you're trying to make an organizational difference, maybe you don't realize it, you're, you're stuck in that financial box. that that is basically funding your whole whatever project or whatever it is, project, product like the opposite. The, the other side of this, like the, the, the pushback. We're not really pushing back against a lot of these concepts just for the purposes of time and getting through it. Yeah. But the pushback side of this conversation is if you truly are in a product organization, like the product management will be delegated these tasks and they'll carry it out. Like they're, it's not like Product management is delegating to a project manager, Hey, I work at Amazon. I gotta launch this new Amazon Alexa. I'm gonna go delegate to a project manager how to do all this stuff. It's like, no, the, the, the leader in the business. Is forming a team. They're iterating, they're trying different things, figuring out what works in the market, and then they budget is following that. They, they're using much smaller, much faster methods some of this that we're talking about, I'm kind of skimming over digging a little bit deeper into it, because I, I think the project management profession I don't think project managers are going away at the same rate that, that, that scrum masters are going away. I think you, first of all, going back to this idea of the, the numbers of Scrum masters, even slash coaches coming into a decline pattern. Yeah. Probably true. But it's seasonal. It's almost Sure, you know yeah. Right now that's probably true. But who knows what the future will bring. Mm-hmm. I do know that. The project management role has been around for a very long time. Sure. I used to be one for many years. The switch over to scrum master from a project manager; something that I've personally done I happen to think is slightly easier, especially if you have if you have an open mindset, right? Yeah. Then the other way around. Yeah, because the other way around, you're really grappling with the lack of hard skills largely. Assuming you have most of the soft skills as a scrum master, but hard skills you know how to do cost budgeting, how to do these kinds of things. That's where you, you need to learn those. Mm-hmm. Right. And there's quite a few of those to learn, for example, as a. As a scrum master, you've been asked to raise risks, I'm sure, but in project management you raise risks and you, you rank them. You rank the Sure the impact, the probability of these risks materializing mitigation plans, all of that stuff. Tracking stuff, tracking them, you tracking them all too, probably. Right? And then you escalate those ones that need escalation, right? Mm-hmm. There's a subtle difference there as opposed to just simply saying, yeah, I see a risk. Mm-hmm. And so those skills also you have to learn mm-hmm. Right? Translating risks and communicating them in the form that your stakeholders understand. You are tracking and managing the risk, but you're you're not necessarily. Doing anything to mitigate any of them. I, I like you I guess you are in the form of you're tracking them and you're making sure that there, there are people in the organization that are dealing with them, , you're not really, what's the word I'm looking for? It's like you're not necessarily causing the removal of risks. I, I've seen project managers do this like that. They, they, they have like sign offs and you know, stuff like that about like, well, you're accepting this risk and we're gonna put it down in writing and you know, we're gonna do a contract negotiation over you know, working with people or whatever. And here we go beat you over the head with the contract. Well, so I think you make a good point there. Project managers have developed this, this skill to document risks. Mm-hmm. Right? They may not be actively removing those those particular impediments. It's not just risks, it's documentation is a, is a there is a lot of documentation For sure. Yeah, for sure. And there's accountability built into that as well. So if somebody is accepting a risk, then the project manager is, is going to document that and as you said, get it signed off. Mm-hmm. They may suggest mitigation plans but that's all, they are suggestions. They're not on the hook to actually action those. Right. What they are doing though is, very jointly assigning those risks to others to own basically, right. To say, either solve that, accept it, or remove it, et cetera. Mm-hmm. And then they're just monitoring the process. But in the, in doing so, they're documenting it such that everything can be pointed to somebody. Mm-hmm. Whereas Scrum Masters aren't necessarily going to that level of detail. They're simply escalating it, possibly on a risk board somewhere or a dashboard. And that's about the extent of it. So I think there's a bit more to it than just simply, Identifying and raising the risk. There's also classifying it, quantifying it right by saying, well, what's the probability this will happen? What is the impact if it should happen? Yeah. And then translating those probabilities and impacts into dollars. That's the key right there is, is say, if this risk happens, and here's the likelihood of it happening. Here is the negative dollar amount impact on the project. Yeah, yeah. And then raising that to the stakeholders or leadership, possibly management, and just say, this is where, where we're at now. Mm-hmm. Now, Mm-hmm. Help us solve this. Yeah. You know, scrum Masters could get a big head start on that though. I mean Oh yeah. If they are exposed to the run rate of their team, if they're exposed to PNLs, if they're ex, I mean, if they're exposed to just the basic financials, they can do a lot of that stuff. You know, they can doubt project a lot of that stuff. No doubt. I think the, the point that I'm trying to make is these skills are definitely not insurmountable or anything. Sure. Yeah. But oftentimes in practice, I don't see Scrum masters privy to the finances like that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Or even for that matter, run rates. Yeah. Right. That for some reason those run rates are guarded, like the secret that they're not supposed to be. Yeah. You know? So if you knew your run rate, which you really should know by the way, right? What's the cost of a sprint? You should be able to tell. People that Right. Without even thinking about it. But I don't really think that's the case out there. I, yeah, I don't, it isn't. And I don't know why. But also, like there's another, maybe there's another podcast for that. I like, the other thing that we didn't talk about is believe it or not scaling is, is on the side of the project manager. I, I, I was trying to wiggle out of this, of being, of being on this side. But I mean, the project manager will just sit down and say, okay, well here's some cutoffs. You know, once you have x number of people, you need another layer of management, and now I need a whatever assistant project manager or somebody else, you know what I mean? Another team lead, once they get over a certain number of development teams and they'll just building block, scale the whole project up, and, and that'll be the end of it, and that that's how they'll scale. I'm not saying that it's a very effective method of scaling, however, they have a system and It works as opposed to when, when you start throwing teams at a scrum master, they and they have five teams and they can't get anything done, nobody thinks that, that, nobody thinks that's a problem. You know? Yeah. Oftentimes though, in those situations when skar masters are kind of dealing with scaling, oftentimes what happens I find is that people will just throw a framework, a scaling framework at it. Sure. Yes. You need less. Oh, you need SAFe, yeah. Right. Now I, I'm specifically talking about scrum masters, right? Mm-hmm. And so whatever the, the, the, the vogue flavor of the month is you know, that that's what they go with. This is, this is now. The way we scale, as opposed to your point, you know a project manager's gonna go figure out everything based on the amount of work, right? Right. Amount of work to be done. The number of team members, but the project manager might call them resources. I know that in some tools there's resource sheets with resource sheet per hour rates and stuff like that. So they can figure all that stuff out and they say, this is our run rate. This is what we need. Here's the amount of work that we think we can do for for the people that we have. We need these many people. All of that. Most of the time it is A technique called straight line extrapolation, right? Mm-hmm. But, and it's not necessarily effective, but they know how to do it, right? Yeah. So as a scrum master, do you at least even know how to do that? Yeah. Right, I think we've harped on the scrum master failings at this point enough. I think maybe we should Again, if you, if, if someone's in the position and has decided to make this jump, , take five minutes now to kind of highlight these, these are the things that you should be highlighting when you're looking to move. I mean the the scaling one. I'm only saying like project management, traditional project managers have to deal with it less as an issue probably because they don't approach it the way Scrum Masters approach it, which is this is a failing of the organization to properly decentralize and, and, and send leadership horizontal rather than verticals. The pyramid is not the answer. Right? A bigger pyramid is not the answer that that's the project management version, right? Right. Of scaling. But a bigger pyramid is not gonna, is not the answer. We know it's not gonna work. You know what I mean? Um but how do we first convince the organization? And then once we've convinced the organization, how do we actually implement this, this you know, horizontal d descaled version of scaling. So again, I go back to what I said before, which is the good Scrum masters with the good communication and facilitation skills will get with leadership and or management, they'll figure out who has influence. They'll figure out who they have to talk to. They'll, they'll, they'll talk to the problems or, or maybe the better version, pull the problems out of leadership by asking questions, asking powerful questions, and getting leadership to kind of introspect to where they want to go. And then driving the, The shape of the organization into the future based off of a plan that they put together. And then it'll be a much more powerful plan because they, they, they both work together to come to the answer rather than me just telling you, you need to do whatever. you bring up a good point which, which I think is often overlooked, right? Which is, as a scrum master, you, you kind of work with your leadership, you coach the organization, right? Yeah. That, that kind of interaction, I don't see that with the traditional project management type role. Mm-hmm. Most times if you're a project manager, chances are you roll up under a pmo. So there are other project managers, there's pmo modus operandi tool sets that you have to use and you cannot stray from that. But one such tool. What there, there is no such tool as. Here's an artifact, go engage leadership, right? Mm-hmm. That doesn't exist. Yeah. So I think that's a failing as I, if you can call it that, between these two paradigms here, scrum Masters should be working and, and easily be working with. Leadership. Mm-hmm. The organization, the other domains of the business. Mm-hmm. Product being one of 'em, but other domains traditional project managers, they don't get to do that. Mm-hmm. They typically don't have the wherewithal to do that either, I would say, without being unkind. Right. Yeah. Because they're focused on the project. Mm-hmm. So that's one. The other thing is scrum masters are more akin to take a product mindset cuz they're dealing with product people. Yeah. Which is what really is, is, is needed. Whereas pro managers, well they're by definition thinking about things as a project. Yeah. Everything has a beginning and an end. Right. So they're thinking about. Everything from that perspective. Like for example, we, we talked about this, but funding fund a project mm-hmm. As opposed to contrast that with fund a product. Right. Or product features. Or product capabilities. Right. Right, right. So start differences there. So if you, you're a, if you're a scrum master looking into becoming a project manager, just be aware of those things upfront and then do what you can to learn about how to redress those kinds of Gaps or deficiencies, I guess you know, that might be chinks in your armor. Project management from the perspective of delivering software, which is a little bit different than like a generalized kind of project management for everything kind of deal. It's like you're a specialist in software. Like you're already a specialist in software. You're already kind of okay with ambiguity. You're already kind of okay taking on the unknowns and starting when, when you know all of the quote plans. Are not in place. Like you're, you're already Okay. Getting started. And, and that's a, that's a strength. You probably have some level of facilitation skills you know, kind of like, oh, I was talking about at the start of the podcast with Yeah. Being able to facilitate a large group and stuff like that. Yeah. Not saying project managers can't do that. Project managers are probably well capable of this too. A lot that I've met anyway. Mm-hmm. But in, in. In terms of Process facilitation in terms of getting teams working together and sponsoring team collaboration and team empowerment. Like not just empowering one team, but improving the ways that teams talk to and work with each other. Right? The, the, the, the glue that binds team. Together that might be an advantage that you have, that you might wanna highlight. And then adaptability flexibility of being able to go from team to team and build different teams up and, and making them kind of permanent fixtures. That's a little like, that would be in my mind, a failing of project management is that you're not really seeing the team as something that is permanently powering a value stream of your organization. You know, you're, you're kind of seeing the team as like a, a temporary type of like, well, these people are just here until we hit this milestone, or hit this deadline, or hit this date or whatever, or deliver X, Y, Z or whatever, and then we're gonna hand off this other team. Or especially with, with teams that I've seen that like. Contract teams where they cut the team at the end of the contract period and they hand off and there's like a hypercare period afterwards where they reduce the team to a certain amount and they just maintain and then yeah, at at some point they'll roll off too. It's like, well, how is the business gonna maintain that? Software when all the people that wrote it and maintained it are completely gone cuz the contract is over because the, the, the, the arbitrary end of date period has passed and now we can't maintain software. Come on. Like, that's kind of ridiculous. So you, there's a lot of advantages here that we've outlined. There's a lot of, a lot of gaps to, to, to be completely honest, like a log gaps. I mean, you even said you, you thought it might be a little bit easier to move from project management over into Scrum Mastery. I, I guess where I wanna move into is Should you make this move? Like what, what, what, what would, what would be like some of it's personality, some of it's where you're at in your career, some of it's, you know training, other things you've been exposed to. But I don't know what, what, what, what would be some. What would be some things that would make you suggest to somebody look into this move, I guess? Yeah. As we do that I'd like to layer on another one. Okay. Which is an advantage if you are coming from the scrum master side of things, which is hopefully you're used to speaking with customers. I've not met that many project managers that actually talk to customers. They don't really care, honestly to be blunt. Right. They, they don't, I mean, that's not their, that's not their remit. I think they, I think they're. The pushback will be, well, they talk to vendors and they'll tell, they'll, they'll tell you, they talk to indirectly customers, but may, maybe not, maybe customers, meaning like the people paying for the software or whatever, but, but not necess necessarily the end user. Right. Other, other than in case they have to play the role of a BA and gather requirements from an end user. But I, I agree with you. Like it's not like the development team in their sprint review. Talking back and forth with a user, as a user kind of navigates and uses the software or a UIUX designer. A lot of project managers I've seen overcome this by having the, their organization or the PMO or wherever they're parked in the organization also has bas and the bas will. Partner with the project manager and, and relieve them of not having that skillset, you know? Yeah. By virtue of not having but, but now you got two people doing the job of, right. Yeah. Right. Yeah, exactly. And, and also not having those, those sprint reviews, cuz typically in project management you don't. Yeah. Right. So let's, let's talk about this. Should you consider. A move toward mm-hmm; project management. I think if you're the type of person who is very detail oriented, who likes to be you know, on top of things when it comes to like, Ambiguity and things like that as much as possible. You also are okay with telling people as opposed to soliciting feedback largely. Again, this is gross generalization, mind you you might, you might consider that, but the, the overriding thing here is gonna be: you still act as a scrum master cuz that's who you are core. Even if you land this, this role as a project manager, just be aware of what is expected of you in addition mm-hmm to being a mm-hmm. Scrum master. And that, that often I think is the case, right? People will say you're a project manager, but. You know, we want you to work with the teams, we want you to talk to the customers, et cetera, if they even say that. But, so just be aware. Should you consider it. I think the path going one way or the other, these paths are definitely things that these are traversable, you can do it. They're not insurmountable. Yeah. You just need to know what you're going in for and then make a plan to come up with everything that you are, you are basically lacking, for want of a better word. Mm-hmm. Um like budgeting for instance, if you're coming from that perspective, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, these things can be learned as well. So partner with people is key, right? Partner with people, whether you're becoming a scrum master or be your from a project management background or vice versa. These people will be your your key, right? So if you're in a PMO world, suddenly partner with those people that have more of an agile mindset in the pmo. Seek out a mentor. I feel you're, you're the best person to give suggestions of should you move. I don't have a lot of great suggestions about should you move aside from where do you want your career to go? You know, if you're just looking purely at money, I don't know. I think both these positions have ceilings and I think the ceilings are very similar. I do think project management profession I think there's probably more opportunities out there. There are certainly some sectors that are Almost completely project management centric and absolutely not you know, whatever scrum master or, you know agile s. Ish. Yeah, definitely. If you're open for your career, to take you in a direction that is away from mainly software and things like that. Mm-hmm. Because that's where a lot of Scrum masters play. If youre okay to go into, let's say civil engineering or you know, building building bridges or whatever. I guess that's. Same thing, but yeah, those kinds of projects that could be multi-year projects, not into its software. Sure, go ahead. You know, get, get yourself into project management and the opportunities are there. But if you're one of those people that say in a couple of years I wanna maybe just move to a different area, product, or mm-hmm. Agile coaching or whatever it might be. Then the jump to those roles from being a project manager will be harder for you. So look at those things first and then make your decision, right? You could easily go , up the ranks, so to speak in project management. Mm-hmm. Your senior pm director of pmo, et cetera. Mm-hmm. But you've gotta want that, right? I think after our conversation, I think I've made a decision. I'm, I'm gonna stay in product. I'm not gonna, yeah. Civil engineering and s suede. No. No, not at all. Okay. No, I'm gonna stay in product. Well to each their own. Yeah, I'm not moving either. Okay. Well, I, I know the territory I came from. Well this I'm glad that we went through this whole podcast and did, didn't convince either of us. Hopefully we've also not convinced you or we have convinced you e either way, you got your money's worth. That's true. This was worth every penny you didn't pay for. Yes, that is, but let us know what else you'd like us to talk about and please like and subscribe. And you can go to arguing agile.com and fill out the form and send us a voicemail