Software development topics I've changed my mind on

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

Yes, and: it's difficult to describe, must be led from the top, and extremely difficult to evaluate from above.

If the person at the top can come down for a coffee with people who endured some bad management, and ask honest, non-loaded three questions, it can be measured qualitatively but with very high accuracy.

The three questions are:

    - What should we start doing?
    - What should we continue doing?
    - What should we stop doing?

This is an immensely powerful tool. Thanks to the awesome person who introduced me this.

Addenda: "Theory X" is something really bad. If you're working with a team which responds positively to Theory X, you have much bigger problems IMHO.

Good leadership doesn't have the ideas. It leverages the collective to extract the best ideas and facilitates them.