Understanding the Differences between Product Owner, Scrum Master and Project Manager

In this week's episode, Ricardo explains the fundamental differences between 3 roles in the project environment: the product owner and Scrum Master, widely used when applying Scrum and the Project Manager. All of them have critical roles in supporting their projects to deliver the results. However, each of them comes with a different set of accountabilities and responsibilities. Listen to the podcast to know more.

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Episode transcript

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Ricardo (4s):
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the 5 Minutes Podcast. Today I like to talk about Product Owner, Scrum Master and Project Manager. And I want to start by saying one thing. I'm not a big fan of roles and trying to frame and put people inside boxes. Okay. So most of the time, the complexity of what we live in the volatility requires to pretty much everything, something like a scrum Owner, a product master, a project Master, whatever. Okay. But I want you to explain these pretty typical rolls in a more practical way. So what is the product owner?

Ricardo (44s):
The product owner is basically used on a Scrum in the name answers to everything. It's the owner of the product. So basically he or she manages the backlog. It's the scope. So he or she acts like the client signing deliverables. They are the interface with all the areas. They manage the benefits. So they are responsible for seeing what is a priority on the value stream you plan to deliver with that product. This second roll is the scrum master. The scrum master is the facilitator is a coach or she, or he leads this Scrum process. For example, the spring's the daily Scrum, but one key thing.

Ricardo (1m 27s):
The scrum master is not the single accountable professional. The team when you are using, I Scrum is accountable. So there is an assumption that is critical important when you are using a scram and the scrum master product owner is that the team is mature enough to be self-managed. So there is no need for someone to oversight the work of a lot. So they know what they have to do, and they do it in, they are accountable on delivering the futures they want to deliver based on the backlog that the product owners stablish. So the scrum master is like, I would say a tape or a glue is someone that puts the team together.

Ricardo (2m 13s):
So many aspects of keeping the team motivated, managing the interfaces and making the life of the team members easier to deliver. But again, the scrum master is not accountable. No lets go to the project manager. So the project manager is the leader and she, or he eats accountable and it must be accountable for the results of the project. So the project manager manages the scope, timeline, risks, procurement, everything else. And it's like many people love to say that its like a bottleneck, you know, or maybe they use off as a PM.

Ricardo (2m 53s):
It's like putting a bottleneck in a process. And I need to agree if you have a team, a perfect set of team members, do they? Yup. All fully responsible. They are so mature and you don't need management by the way, you don't need anything. You just put them together and its done. But the problem is, is that a reality show us that there are many challenges. For example, imagine if you are working in a very complex project with thousands of team members, working in different areas, doing differently, each not so easy. If you do not have someone that could be able to make decisions and to drive the project in these, these are the rules of the project manager.

Ricardo (3m 40s):
So its not just teaching people or facilitating, but having ownership of that. Right. Okay. And this is mostly used in what was it? We call the predictive project management or waterfall project management. I don't like to use, I know many people like that. We like to use a traditional project Manager and this because every time people say traditional, it sounds to me like old, like something that is dated. And I need to tell you, based on my experience, most of the companies I see today, do we need to use pretty much everything they need to use. Projects were scram. And this is a job. Broach is extremely helpful, but they are all the projects that you'll need to have the structure of a project manager.

Ricardo (4m 26s):
And you need to have that because otherwise things do not move because people we'll get into conflict and someone will have to decide. So what is important is that if you want to be a good entrepreneur and ideas into results, that I'm calling this my project manager, you call it the way you want. You need to have all the set of competencies. So this is why, for example, I studied a lot of Scrum. I studied a lot of the PMBOK and all of these competencies. They come to us, you had her to help solve in the problem you were facing. Sometimes it'll be the best approaches to a point in having a project manager to deliver and to centralize, like for example, Today digital transformation or a technology projects that are, I would say at the center of what most of the companies that are doing today.

Ricardo (5m 16s):
And then this concept of the squads, agility, the Spotify model, they are absolutely fantastic to deliver what you need. So the best answer to say, which is the best approach or is this a career evolution? And I would say to you that, no, it's not a career evolution. Each not that one is better than the other. They are different sets of skills that we'll make you more competent on helping your organization to succeed on getting things done. And this is what really matters. I hope you enjoyed this podcast and see you next week with another 5 minutes Podcast.

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