How is a Scrum Master different from a project manager?
What the interviewer wants to hear
- Scrum Master is accountable for the team's effectiveness and Scrum adoption
- Scrum Master coaches and removes impediments, does not assign tasks
- Project manager is accountable for delivering scope, time and cost goals
- Project managers often handle budgets, vendors, risk and governance
- In hybrid settings, both roles can work together
Model answer
A Scrum Master is accountable for the Scrum Team's effectiveness. They coach the team and organisation in Scrum, facilitate events when needed and help remove impediments, but they do not assign tasks or own delivery dates, because the team is self-managing. A project manager is accountable for delivering a project's objectives within agreed constraints such as scope, time, cost and quality. That often includes budgets, vendor contracts, risk management, reporting and governance across many teams or departments. In practice, the two roles overlap in places, for example both care about removing blockers and keeping stakeholders informed. In a hybrid organisation, a project manager might coordinate several Scrum teams, contracts and a fixed launch date, while each team's Scrum Master focuses on how well the team works. The key is to be clear who owns which decisions.
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More easy Project Manager questions
- Describe the main phases of a project lifecycle.
- How do you manage risks on a project?
- How do you keep stakeholders informed during a project?
- What is the difference between agile and waterfall, and when would you use each?
- How do you track whether a project is on track?
- What is the difference between a project, a program and a portfolio?
- What goes into a good project management plan?
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