With a single developer, yes. With five or six it's still doable to all meet the customer and talk about your issues directly. Beyond that you start acting as

With a single developer, yes. With five or six it's still doable to all meet the customer and talk about your issues directly. Beyond that you start acting as interfaces already because not enough people can come to the meeting, etc, so you become like mini-PMs anyways. Might as well get someone who can actually manage (track) and do it right... I think it does help though, for you to know all your doctors/developers, but I don't think you need to manage them day-to-day because a lot of tasks are pretty straight forward and/or can be easily delegated.