The best teams I've been on have done well without much management at all. Mostly the managers were there to shield the team, the rest of the time the managers

The best teams I've been on have done well without much management at all. Mostly the managers were there to shield the team, the rest of the time the managers just got out of the way. On the very best projects, individuals will step up and lead for a while, then decide to do other things and let someone else run the show a little. Maybe it will be feature ownership, or to handle a different phase of a product in its ship cycle. (Meanwhile there will be managers behind the scenes, hopefully not many, making sure that forms are getting filled out, HR duties are attended to, and nonsense meetings are canceled and kept canceled). Most of the places I've worked could have used less management. A lot less.