Christophe MontagneInterim CTO · Advisory

Scrum in Name Only/Closing

Conclusion

Why Scrum and PMBOK are not opponents, and what to do next.

Scrum and PMBOK are not opponents. Both descend from the same idea: manage work by learning from feedback.

PMBOK gave the profession its vocabulary and a complete map of what a project must take care of. Scrum offered a different answer to uncertainty: short loops, forecasts instead of baselines, and accountabilities shared across a small team instead of concentrated in one role.

The trouble began when Scrum was adopted as the opposite of project management. The project manager left, and much of the work went with them: the timeline, the architecture, the integration of the parts, the honest conversation with stakeholders. What remained was the visible surface, the daily, the backlog and the demo, now detached from the goals that gave them meaning.

The way back does not require choosing between the two traditions. It requires reading Scrum through the discipline it is said to have replaced, finding every accountability that was dropped along the way, and giving each of them an owner again. Planning is the first of them. It is the subject of the companion article, Agile Planning.

Key takeaways

  1. Scrum redistributed project management. Removing the project manager without reassigning the accountabilities is the root of Scrum in name only.
  2. PMBOK laid the foundations. Its knowledge areas remain a complete checklist of what every project must take care of, whatever its lifecycle.
  3. Both traditions descend from Deming. They differ in how often they loop and in what they let move: scope or schedule.
  4. Every inspection needs a goal. Without a Product Goal and a Sprint Goal, Scrum's events degrade into status reporting.
  5. Planning is not optional in agile. Agile teams should plan more often and at more levels than traditional ones, with forecasts expressed as ranges.
  6. Architecture needs an owner. Scrum names no owner for technical coherence; organisations that do not assign one accumulate debt until delivery slows to a halt.
  7. Recovery starts below the waterline. Restore the goals, the conditions for honest inspection and the ownership of every accountability. The rituals will follow.