> 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?
replies(5):
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.