Yeah, I see your point and I've been on similar teams. But I think you're: 1) Drawing a lot of conclusions from a single data point (the project you were on)

Yeah, I see your point and I've been on similar teams. But I think you're: 1) Drawing a lot of conclusions from a single data point (the project you were on) I've been on teams like the one you're referring to as well. I've also been on teams full of great people who needed someone to manage all of those things. Some teams are better at self-organization than others, and I don't think it's a fatal flaw for a team not to be capable of that (to the extent that a business requires, anyway). I've been on many more teams full of excellent people who were incredibly relieved to have someone else do all the organizational work, even if they themselves could've done it quite easily. Organization is overhead. Your team lead was likely filling in the role of "product manager" even if it didn't seem like they were (and in fact, the great ones sometimes make it seem like they're not doing anything at all). 2) Misinterpreting my point The article's suggesting more specialization, whereas it seems like you're arguing for less. The article is suggesting that the role of "product manager" should be split into multiple roles, whereas it seems like you think the role should be subsumed by developers and team leads. Team organization becomes exponentially more difficult if your team is composed of many different roles and specialists. That's what I meant by "herd those cats".