Our IT organization is in the midst of transitioning from a traditional waterfall methodology to an agile/SAFe framework. In your experience, is a traditional project manager better suited to be a product owner or a scrum master? Who would make an ideal product owner?
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Thanks. I believe we might have to follow a similar path as well. I am thinking the PO role needs to have a good understanding of the business function/strategy and a high level technical understanding of what it will take to build it.
It's going to depend on the person in question, how much training they've had, and what their natural aptitude for agile practices is.
I would be very cautious about putting a "traditional _Project Manager_" in either role.
Project management is often high level, focused on coordinating time lines, due dates, progress reports, and collecting, aggregating, reporting information, and delegating to others.
That might be closer to the Scrum Master, but scaled agile (and other agile frameworks) are clear that scrum master is not just an embedded project manager. They support and coach the team through issues, block, tackle, clear the way.
https://framework.scaledagile.com/scrum-master-team-coach
The product owner role is very far removed from the typical project manager. They have to balance the needs of the many stakeholders and develop achievable delivery plans that are achievable, and deliver the needed outcomes and value.
https://framework.scaledagile.com/product-owner
Both roles could be huge shocks or adjustments, and if your project managers roll in to either with the thought it's not a huge change, they will set their teams up for frustration, and failure.
These are new roles, and must be measured against clear new role requirements and outcomes.
We transitioned from a traditional waterfall methodology to the SAFe framework about 5 or 6 years ago. Finding the right role for traditional project managers is a real challenge. They started out as scrum masters, but for most of them this new role didn't suit them because they didn't feel they were fully exploiting their project management skills and didn't want to become “mere coaches”.
The Product Owner role is a very important key role in the SAFe framework. You have to be able to align value delivery and feature planning with business strategy and objectives. This requires close collaboration with business owners and product managers. In addition, you need to be able to effectively communicate the product vision to your team. Most project managers didn't have all the skills to take on this role.
In the end, we reduced the number of project managers, and we still have a few technical infrastructure projects that are executed in waterfall when the recipe is known. Our project managers are now used to coordinate the execution of these projects.