What is the future of the Project Manager position at Schwab? Is it a safe spot for the long term?
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The only future Schwab employees have right now is a future out of Schwab. The only projects available for project management is how to streamline headcount reduction even faster. HR has sold its soul so don't expect conscience or sympathy when they march you out. Don't be surprise to see a goat's head with an upside-down cross in every HR office.
Schwab has been transitioning to Agile for about 10 years now. I would say they are at a 3 on average, if you compare with industry best practices.
Many Scrum Masters think that using Jira, makes them a 10.
PMs are useless. They are just a band aid for incompetent engineers. Therefore it’s a safe bet to be a PM at Schwab.
Holistically: 2
Areas within STS: 5 or 6 (blue), 2 or 3 (green)
PM’s do not exist by 5 or 6
Where would you say the company is, regarding the transformation to Agile?
1 = Just started / 10 = World class
What is the point where PMs are not needed?
Wait, are projects getting funded??
Pm's don't even know how to pm correctly. Half of them don't even know what the goals and scope of a project are they just want funding..
As long as Schwab will continue to have this complex structure, there will be need for good PM like roles.
@1gyh+1sq4mBXV
dinosaur survived and lived happily after birds.
we know them now as Birds and Chicken.
and if look around there are mainframe team still surving in same project form decades and decades.
PM’s - within SAFe and a Product Model framework - do not exist; with some rare exceptions. If I was a PM, I’d be turning myself into a Portfolio Manager (MD / D level), a Product Owner or a Scrummaster ASAP. The Waterfall process will die (and should have a long time ago) this year. This shift is also the “cause for the pause”, as making this transition is nearly impossible to execute when there’s significant project / product churn. To safely attempt it, you’d want virtually nothing happening.
If you’re an “Agile hybrid” PM and use Jira, Kanban, etc. you’re an easy resource to transition. If you’re a Gantt chart wielding, Waterfall zealot (aka dinosaur) you’ll be ID’ed as a liability (if you aren’t already).
PMs are basically running useless meetings with no outcomes at Schwab. I can say this is very true in STS. We probably can get rid of of most of them. Retain maybe 5% of the current PMs for regulation and get rid of the rest.
- How many PMs are required by regulation or other?
- How many major projects are in the pipeline?
- How much can AI and self/automated systems negate human PMs?
- Does a PM create value and how?
The short answer is PMs will likely be asked to do more across lower headcount. Longer answer adds that PMs will likely be reserved for multivendor and multistage projects with smaller efforts self managed. We’ve seen this for decades as a soft trend. No reason it doesn’t continue.
Here we also have a pattern of dissolving the PMO and then recreating it. Same for capacity and other administrative functions.
Lastly, look at Agile, Cobit, ITIL, RUP and all the other standard models for organization. They’ll fight to keep bodies in the roles to keep relevance. But at some point one of them is going to partner and automate into an outsourced system of reporting. This will remove on staff PMs except the one or two coordinators. The rest will be human interface to HAL and automagic reports telling you you’re over budget.