This presentation was provided by Al Brown of ITHAKA, during the NISO event "Project Management for the Information Community: Managing and Communicating the Process, Session Six," held on Friday, March 29, 2019.

1. A Project Manager in an
Agile World
March 29, 2019
Al Brown

2. My Plan for
This Talk
1. About ITHAKA
2.My Story
3.Agile Manifesto
4.How Most Work Gets Done at
ITHAKA
5.How Project Work Gets Done
at ITHAKA
6.Servant Leadership

3. At ITHAKA, our passion drives us to make the world smarter. Our mission comes
to life in four service areas.
JSTOR One of the world's
leading academic
databases, JSTOR powers
the research and learning
of 6 million users each
month.
Ithaka S+R Ithaka S+R
provides research and
strategic guidance to help
the academic and cultural
communities serve the public
good and navigate
economic, technological, and
demographic change.
Portico Portico, a
community-supported digital
archive, preserves over
564,000 e-books and e-
journals for future scholars.
Artstor Artstor provides 2+
million high-quality images
and digital asset
management software to
enhance scholarship and
teaching.

4. About Al
Brown
Senior Project Manager
• Over 25 years managing projects, mostly
technology-based
• Project Management Professional (PMP)
• Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)
• PMI Professional Business Analyst (PMI-
PBA)
• At ITHAKA two-and-a-half years, first year
as a consultant

5. Agile Manifesto - 2001
We value these MORE…
• Individuals and interactions
• Working software
• Customer collaboration
• Responding to change
We value these, but less…
• processes and tools
• comprehensive documentation
• contract negotiation
• following a plan
http://agilemanifesto.org

6. How Most Work
Gets Done
Most work at ITHAKA is not done as a “project”. We do our work in
teams of four to nine professionals.
Continuously…
• Complete work in the current sprint
• Get that work in front of users
• Add to the backlog of work
• Groom and estimate the backlog
• Product Owner prioritizes the backlog
• Daily stand-up meetings
Once per sprint…
• Plan the sprint
• Close the current sprint and open
the next one
• Retrospect on the past sprint

7. Cross-Team Tools
1. Scrum of Scrums meeting (twice a week)
2. Show and Tell meeting (every two weeks)
3. Slack
4. Ad-hoc meetings
5. Hallway conversations

8. Typical Teams
Front End
• Product Owner / Product Manager
• User Experience Designer / User
Researcher
• Tech Lead
• Engineers
• Quality Assurance
• Scrum Master
Back End
• Architect
• Engineers
• Quality Assurance
• Scrum Master

9. “Projects” are the exception, not the
rule. Typically projects involve multiple
teams and six months or more of work.
“Project manager” is often a part-time
role for Scrum Masters.

10. How Project Work
Gets Done
All project work gets done within sprints. The sprint cadence continues,
and project management is a thin layer on top of Scrum.
Near the start
• Create an Execution Framework
document
• Define high-level epics
• Come to a complete understanding
and estimate of the work
• Develop scorecards and milestones to
track progress
Continuously
• Complete the work within sprints
• Practice the usual scrum ceremonies
• Project scrum of scrums
• Project leads meetings
• Project manager attends team
ceremonies
• Publish scorecards

11. Servant
Leadership
Team members are at the top of
the org chart.
Product Owners / Architects and
Scrum Masters serve the team.
Project managers serve the
Scrum Masters and the teams.
Each level of “servant
leadership” works to remove
obstacles for the levels above
them.

12. Thank You
Al S. Brown
al.brown@ithaka.org
Read more about ITHAKA Agile practices at
https://medium.com/build-smarter