Software development topics I've changed my mind on

> Good management is invaluable. (I went most of my career before seeing it done well)

I don't think I've ever seen good management. Anyone care to explain what that would look like?

Your team gets a clear and simple high-level goal that everyone at the company understands is important and shields you to work on it for a year without interruptions.

You don’t know it, but your manager playing up your teams contributions to the company, arranging happy coordination with other teams, occasionally intervening to resolve intra-team disputes, privately managing egos and careers, and jiu jitsu’ing any attempts to distract your team.

They trust your competence and decisions, but they understand enough to keep you on-track and provide a valuable outside view perspective.

Key thing good manager shields team from corporate bs as much as possible

A couple of indicators I have seen:

1. For a non-manager, an indication that there is good management (project, process, etc.) in place is that the management aspect sort of seems to disappear/ moves into the background.

2. Communication becomes efficient or smooth.

How is it achieved?

1. High level goals and metric. And incremental upgrades to those. I think people/ teams need to get comfortable with one set of those before you want to improve better those metrics. Jira story points and velocity are not good metrics.

2. A manager acts as a buffer. A manager absorbs some shock and filters some data/ emotions which would otherwise flow between one (ideally more) pair of layers: one above them and one below them.

3. One kind of non-sense (from many kinds) is that people- junior or senior- are 'trying to prove their value'. This is why some people speak unnecessarily in meetings, emails go back and forth, senior management chimes in on low level issues, etc. A couple of good managers I saw were able to limit that- over a period of time.

Here's the problem with good management: you will not notice it, you only notice bad management.

A good manager is at the service of their team. That means they will do anything to keep the team productive. In most cases this means shielding them from corporate bullshit. In practice this also means that you will barely notice them.

So when you notice your management being intervening and bad, it's probably bad. When you barely notice your management and can't see what value they are adding, it's most likely excellent management.

Good managers will help you develop to where you want to be next. Part of this is helping you see where the next place for you is. Then they give you tasks to do that get you there.

They balance the above with the current business needs of course. Generally the two should be inline, but where they are not they help you manage that.