Are All We Need Heroes? -The New Role of the IT-Project Manager:-The New Role of the IT-Project Manager

Systems development practice is undergoing a major transformation, as many companies try to improve their practice to become more flexible, adaptable and agile. However, research provides convincing evidence that it may be difficult to become agile or even just to integrate agile processes in existing companies that are dominated by traditional practice. A recent literature study concludes that most literature and practice now strive to balance the two approaches to “get the best from both worlds”. The complexity added by having and combining two “worlds” complicates the job of the it-project manager and change his – or her role. Understanding these changes and the new role is the focal point of this work. Through a focused literature review, types of balancing are found, and motives, opportunities and challenges of balancing are mapped. A framework of the it-project managers’ role in organizations that balance agile and traditional approaches is constructed.More and more software firms adopt agile methods into their practice to become more flexible and increase their speed to market. To get the best from both worlds, they often choses to balance agility with traditional approaches. This complicates the job for especially the project managers. This paper investigates the new project manager role of balanced systems development by building a theoretically based framework and render it probable through two case studies. The paper describes the complexity of the new role and how it may lead to overload of the project manager. Solutions inspired by agility and ambidexterity are sketched