There is a continuous discussion about agile and project management. Some voices in the agile community claim "we don't have project managers on our scrum projects, we don't need them." Instead of engaging in the conversation about the need or not for project managers, let's look at what project management does. These are the 9 areas of project management according to PMBOK(r):
1. Project Initiation
2. Scope Management
3. Time Management
4. Cost Management
5. Quality Management
6. HR Management
7. Communications Management
8. Risk Management
9. Procurement Management
So the first - and actually only - question is
Are these activities found on your agile project in any way - independent of who is doing them?
If they are, you're doing project management. End of Discussion. That's it. That's all there is. You can put a name to the person or persons that do these things. You can call them anything you want. But in the end they are performing the activities attributed to a Project Manger.
