Technical Program Managers don’t implement SCRUM
BR Vol II 04/52: TPM is a powerful role but often misunderstood especially outside of Silicon Valley. What is the right way to leverage the skills of a great TPM?
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Technical Program Managers are agents of momentum, enablers of change, and maestros of chaos management.
TPMs work across multiple teams, sometimes multiple organizations, to synthesize execution plans on how to turn a corporate and/or product strategy into action.
Cross-functional teams will notice when a great TPM has entered into the chaos. A Program or Project never fails in grand fashion. It dies by a thousand paper cuts (or many small missed milestones because of small and big risk items and dependencies not managed properly).
As organizations scale up, the strategies will get bigger, the challenges will get harder, and complexity will grow exponentially. Having an experienced TPM will become a necessary strategic investment. However, you should not be bringing in a TPM to help you implement scrum or kanban or [insert trending agile methodology] or clean up the backlog.
The right way to use a TPM:
Step 1: TPMs execute on big programs.
Step 2: TPMs learn from the successes and mistakes of those programs
Step 3: TPMs help fine tune the company systems and culture
Step 4: repeat Step 1 - 3.
Product Management is focused on the Product.
Engineering is focused on the Code.
Marketing is focused on marketing
TPMs are focused on the company.
The visibility afforded to Technical Program Managers as a result of driving complex cross-functional programs makes them well situated to observe whether an organization is functioning effectively or is there room for improvement. How?
TPMs see how and what strategy the product teams are setting.
TPMs have visibility into the staffing and work loads of engineering teams.
TPMs are working with business teams to align product and engineering work streams with business objectives.
TPMs are working with Quality and Test teams to ensure an appropriate validation strategy is baked into the plans to ship high quality products.
TPMs are communicating with executive stakeholders on program status, risk management, and timelines.
TPMs elevating and driving leaders to make decisions on road blocks, roadmap adjustments, staffing needs, and whatever is needed to ship a program successfully.
All of this provides unprecedented visibility into product and engineering success and areas for improvement.
TPMs can be program execution specialists AND organizational tacticians helping leadership to evolve the organization over time from structure to systems. They are well versed in every agile methodology, OKR approaches, Gantt chart builders, systems thinkers, so much more.
TPMs help you find what piece of what agile methodology will fit at what junction of your organizational scale and synthesize a bespoke methodology uniquely fit to your evolving culture.
Best example I can share of the potentially pivotal role TPMs can play in helping leaders execute is this interview Lenny did with Yuhki Yamashita (CPO of Figma). There is a line that newsletter/interview that makes me smile:
Yuki: I partner with Lawrence Luk (our Technical Program Manager) on leading the planning process. Lawrence comes up with the process, and together we handle the comms and implementation.
Ufff… so much to unpack in that. Maybe, maybe, MAYBE I can get Lawrence to have a chat with me someday.🤞 So much I could learn from him.
Until next time 👋!
-Aadil
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