Understanding the roles of the manager in agile project management

Abstract

Agile project management (APM) does away with the role and the job title of the manager and instead places emphasis on self-organizing teams. However, recent surveys show that the job title of managers, particularly the project manager, is in existence on a significant number of agile projects. At the same time there is very little empirical evidence on the manager's role in an APM framework. To address this issue, a Grounded Theory study involving 20 software professionals from 18 different organizations which employed Agile Software Development (ASD) was carried out. The key finding of this preliminary study is the identification of the four roles played by managers on agile teams: mentor, coordinator, negotiator, and process adapter. As a mentor, the manager guides and supports the team in agile practice; the coordinator facilitates and coordinates the teams functioning; the negotiator takes care of the budget and customer requirements; and as a process adapter, the manager customizes agile and also implements agile-waterfall hybrids. The results of this study highlight the need for in-depth research into the different management roles and functioning of the agile team and manager. Additionally, this study will help guide new and existing managers to better understand the various aspects and boundaries of their new roles on agile projects and enable them to better facilitate self-organizing teams.