tl;dr Trust/anxiety The dynamic goes like this: 1. The manager is responsible for team's output/metrics. 2. Metrics are driven by improvements to the product

tl;dr Trust/anxiety The dynamic goes like this: 1. The manager is responsible for team's output/metrics. 2. Metrics are driven by improvements to the product. 3. Software functionality is hard to estimate (not a widget factory as other comments mention). 4. Manager gets anxious as it will be judged by an outcome not entirely within control. 5. Knowing everyone is putting their best effort increases confidence that team will reach goals by which the manager will be measured. The manager evaluates team members on longer intervals depending on past performance. This allows the manager to course-correct before the team is evaluated. The seniority/past-performance of a team member determines how much the manager trusts them to spend the team's resources (time; man-hours) to accomplish the team's goals. The brute force approach to make sure people aren't slacking is watching them work/check-in/report on progress. You can quickly tell if someone isn't putting an effort after a couple of standups/reviews with less-than-expected output or 'yet another excuse'.