At some point during my first software role at SolarCity, Kurt Werle told me that a manager’s job is to make my job easier. It was a revelation.

I recently watched a talk by Fred George (“an industry consultant, and has been writing code for over 46 years in (by his count) over 70 languages. He has delivered projects and products across his career, and in the last decade alone, has worked in the US, India, China, and the UK.”): Managing Manager‐less Processes.

In that talk, he outlines all the components of what a project manager is expected to do:

  • Coach/mentor (not necessarily best choice — they became a manager — maybe you don’t want to become a manager)
  • Ambassador (not a decision maker, but a representative)
  • Clerk (e.g., tracking stories)
  • Concierge (working for the team)
  • Leader (teams are better off by choosing their own leader)

What he arrives at (timestamp: 23:28) is that “going out and trying to find the best person for an organization that has all these traits is doomed to failure” and that “these are roles you don’t necessarily have to have the manager do … you want to sort of begin to edge away from these things and disperse these roles into the rest of the team.”

Food for thought!

“Agile”

Separately, a brilliantly funny talk about “agile” by Dave Thomas — one of the original signers of the Agile Manifesto.

He explained: all you need to do to be “agile” is — recursively, throughout the organization:

  • What
    • Find out where you are
    • Take a small step toward your goal
    • Adjust your understanding based on what you learned
    • Repeat
  • How
    • When faced with two or more alternatives that deliver roughly the same value, take the path that makes future change easier

And to summarize, “agile is not something you do — it’s how you do it.”

That whole panel (link above) is very interesting. The first 12 minutes are Martin Fowler’s take.