The traditional project management model involves thorough planning, controlling, monitoring and, in case of events that might affect the project, taking the right actions for bringing it back to the initially predicted plan and path. The approach assumes, that the future events, their consequences and outcomes can be predicted (hence the detailed planning), that one project resembles another and that everything important is measurable (hence, the always present constraints of cost, schedule and scope). The tasks and the actions to fulfill them weigh heavily while the actors involved in the development (the teams) are hardly being focused on. They are rather seen as resources that have to be directed towards meeting project’s and organization’s goals; the concept of managing the team is not at all insisted on as the project manager’s focus falls entirely on managing tasks.
Obviously, this approach can no longer face the challenges of today’s IT business world: the projects tend to grow bigger, the requirements are more elusive and always subjected to changes, the technologies to choose from are countless and the demands of the workforce are also different. The teams, at their turn have to face these challenges while keeping up the development speed and quality. Therefore, in agile practices, the focus switches towards less concrete aspects such as managing and building self-organizing teams, collaboration and decision making and developing servant leadership styles.
Hence, the directive style encouraged and practiced in traditional project management is set aside in favor of an adaptive style: the leaders are supposed to influence and recommend and not impose, assist and counsel and not order or direct. An Agile project manager is more likely to focus on establishing mutual respect, trust and confidence with his/her subordinates rather that fixing goals, protocols and setting up clearly defined hierarchies. This is also closely coupled to another concept often met in APM, namely, building self organizing teams.
Lastly, Agile methodologies put a strong emphasis on collaboration and encourage project managers to facilitate collaboration within the team and act as mediators between the team and other parts involved in the projects (stakeholders). When it comes to decision making, the role of an agile project manager is to decentralize decision making , encourage debate and sharing of ideas, unlike a traditional project manager who will probably try to keep the decision making process as central as possible.