Biz: The Renaissance of Project Management

A few days back, I posted on LinkedIn¹ that we need a renaissance in project management.

For the last years, I’ve been working with multiple clients, all at different stages of their “agile journey.” The common thread? A well-intentioned drive to streamline, become more efficient, and embrace modern ways of working.

But here’s the rub: in the rush to adopt agile, something crucial often gets lost in translation, particularly in Finland. When the agile revolution kicked off, the mantra was clear: agile roles, functions, and ceremonies would not replace essential figures like project managers.

Yet, what happened in many organizations? There was a collective (mis)understanding that we either didn’t need these folks anymore or that they could morph into “new agile people.”

That may be why efficiency in many Finnish organizations, especially those producing digital services, is disappointing. ²

The Great Misunderstanding: Agile vs. Management

Many companies have decided that all they need are fast-moving, small digital teams, maybe a few designers, and that’s it. Project managers or facilitators? We shoehorned the middle managers into roles like Product Owners or Scrum Masters³. Soon, we said things like, “Everyone just has to be their project manager”, or “the team leads are the team’s project managers.” As many have discovered, this approach can be disastrously naive⁴.

That might not have been so bad if we had not already completely managed to muddy the waters on what a “project manager” and even a “project” actually were. It felt like anyone looking after anyone with a semblance of responsibility was slapped with the “project manager” title. Often, without a clue about what project management truly entails. We started calling everything a “project,” a very Finnish tendency – “I’ll take a project of that!” Diluting the value of proper project management completely.

Then came the supposed saviors: scaled agile frameworks like LeSS and SAFe, promising to fix these issues. And what did they do? They added layers—“Area Product Owners” and “Release Train Engineers”—without addressing the critical point: many projects are just that: time-limited, well-scoped, and risky ventures, not ongoing programs.

At its heart, Agile is a production management methodology, much like Lean, focused on creating the best possible product with the available team and resources. It’s brilliant for delivering products within a project. However, Lean/Agile methodologies do not inherently provide the framework to manage an initiative from inception to strategic alignment and closure⁵.

A Call for a Renaissance?

That brings us to the critical gap: the “middle layer” of management. It’s not about micromanaging teams; it’s about overseeing investments, ensuring strategic alignment, and managing the lifecycle of these time-bound efforts. This is where program management, or a revitalized project management, needs to step in.

Some argue that this middle layer isn’t needed if you’re “doing agile right.” That’s like saying a hammer doesn’t work because you hit your thumb with it instead of the nail. When you have multiple investments, operational considerations, and strategic goals to juggle, you need a robust oversight framework.

What I’m after isn’t about abandoning Lean/Agile principles at the team level or imposing a command-and-control structure. Instead, it’s about complementing the teams’ work with crucial due diligence at a strategic level. This revitalized project management function ensures that investments align with the company’s financial appetite and strategic goals. It’s about providing good forecasts and clear visibility to the board and stakeholders, enabling informed decision-making. A core part of this is diligently tracking the actual team burn rate (the ongoing costs) against the planned investment⁶ and, critically, the expected value the initiatives should deliver. Without this strategic financial oversight, it’s too easy for budgets to be consumed mindlessly, with a weak or misaligned connection to the strategic objectives.

This strategic oversight, facilitated by skilled project leadership, also involves: Ensuring clarity for each team or Product Owner on the company direction and strategy Providing the mechanisms to assess whether a project or product is still a viable investment or needs to be stopped or significantly redirected if costs are likely to outweigh the realizable value. Managing the smooth and planned transition from one phase to another in the project or product lifecycle

In this revitalized sense, management is not about team-level task tracking⁷. It’s about managing complex investments, performing due diligence, implementing effective governance, mapping work to strategy, and facilitating transparent communication with stakeholders⁸ about progress, forecasts, and expectations.

Crucially, if we shift our thinking from project management as a way to organize people to a way to drive investment and capital expenditure, its role becomes even more apparent. From the agile teams’ perspective, the project manager becomes a valuable servant leader who creates clarity and focus by handling strategic alignment and unblocking managerial and stakeholder impediments, allowing the teams to concentrate on delivery.

What we need, especially for the many Finnish companies that aren’t massive enterprises, is a renaissance of project management. One that understands agile and lean principles but isn’t afraid to implement the necessary oversight and governance mechanisms to ensure that investments deliver real value. It’s time to bring back skilled project leadership that can navigate the complexities beyond the team backlog, act as a strategic partner to the business, and serve as an enabler for the teams, truly bridging the gap between strategy and execution.