I want to pick up a thread from three recent posts on the Agile business approach. This thread concerns the role of project management and project managers – two different roles, as we’ll see.
In those other posts, I pointed out – among other things – that Agile concerns product development, not product management. But I pointed out that – at a deeper level – project managers serve a role in the system of class struggle underneath Agile. Beyond that, they often serve in roles oddly parallel of those of middle managers.
Let’s ask another question along those lines: do companies really need project managers? At all? Even on their own terms (i.e., profit and loss)?
Betteridge’s Law
For anyone not in the know, Betteridge’s Law of Headlines says that when a headline ends in a question mark, we can answer the question “no.” Chuckles aside, the law doesn’t actually hold. It’s often wrong.
But it does hold in this case. The answer to the question in the headline is “no.” Companies do not need project managers. But, as usual, things aren’t so simple.
Project Management, Not Project Managers
Companies do need to track projects in some way. They also need to organize and assign those projects to team members. The problem, then, isn’t project management per se. The problem is that the corporate world – aided, no doubt, by various factors – has convinced itself that this is all best done by specialists.
But there’s precious little evidence for that claim. Even those who perform the ‘project manager’ role well tend to suffer from various problems. They call unnecessary meetings and add too much bureaucracy to a work team. They serve as the ‘eyes and ears’ of leaders, and they often struggle to understand the work. And they do so whether they’re a ‘part’ of the team or separate from it. A good team of employees sharing the load would often – if not almost always – do a better job carrying out those functions.
One further problem in the business world: even when companies lack a specific ‘project manager’ role in the org chart, they often repackage the role and call it something else. In SAFe Agile, for example, several roles – from Scrum Master to Product Owner to Release Train Engineer to certain leaders – are sometimes just ‘Project Manager’ by a different name.
Democracy Over Technocrats
Furthermore, I find the basic point – democracy over technocrats – to be one greatly ignored in the business world. For the most part, rank-and-file workers are better at doing their jobs than management. And this goes doubly – if not more so – for ‘management’ roles like ‘project manager.’
Beyond these issues, the field of project management encourages otherwise kind, reasonable people to assume that people can’t be trusted to do their work, need to be monitored, and can’t make decisions on their own. Companies should set aside these bureaucratic, technocratic mindsets.
For the most part, when you give people decision-making authority, they handle it responsibly. Often more responsibly than the people ‘above’ them.
