Joel Sporleder Director, Walmart Technology Project Management Shared Services The evolving role of the Project Manager

2 Agenda Introduction History of the PM role in Walmart Technology External and Internal Drivers of Change How the PM role is evolving Q&A

3 History of the PM role in Walmart Tech Still a relatively new role Historically focused on Waterfall / Iterative Large amount of process introduced Shift from “Walmart way” to Industry Best Practice

4 External Drivers of Change Information Technology is changing Pace of change New approaches (Agile) are gaining momentum Retail environment is changing Customer expectations are high

5 Internal Drivers of Change “Walmart is a Technology Company” – Doug McMillon Integration of Digital and Physical Pace of change “Being” Agile

6 The PM role is evolving… Continued shift to Agile for software development PMs need to be flexible and work in multiple methodologies at once… Simplification of processes Multiple possible roles to play (PM, Scrum Master, Release Train Engineer, etc.) Managing distributed teams

7 Implications PMs must be willing to learn new skills / tools Resource Managers of PMs must learn new ways of allocating their teams Old metrics for performance may not apply to all projects…how to measure success? PMs must help lead through more ambiguity

8 Q&A