There are other variations you can use to make agile project management work for you. In one of the scrum projects I had, I had the BA act as the product owner since the BA is more familiar with the business objectives of the project. BA constantly checks with the “real product owner” to make sure that decisions are done as per the latter’s expectation. I guess this is the tactical portion that “Agile PM” mentioned.

The issue is more the TIME. Meeting with customers, prospects and all the other constituents necessary to get a product out takes TIME. The meetings make it not feasible for the PM to be reachable by the dev team any time of the day, no matter how much technology you can throw at the problem.

You make an excellent point about the frequency of questions meaning the dev team is too in the dark. That can often be the cause. But often it is because the dev team is inexperienced or afraid of being responsible for their own decisions, so they ask PM to make every little decision.

But alas, this reasonable and sane expectation is against the “Official Scrum Recipe.” Scrum mandates a “product owner” live in the Scrum room and be on-site and able to answer any question within minutes. This is just not feasible in any situation where the product is for more than one customer.

And because the trend of the day is to treat Scrum like it’s a frakin’ religion, well to suggest deviation from the recipe is heresy.

More importantly, the product development team shouldn’t have to ask the PM for direction and resolution every few minutes. The minutia needed for these hour by hour (or card by card) tasks should be thoroughly understood by the development teams. If they are immobile without the PM sitting within ear shot, they are too in the dark about the product and the customer.