> is the manager most informed to take the decisions? Often, yes. Or at least knows who is, and how to put it to them. Put another way, the domain experts ar

> is the manager most informed to take the decisions? Often, yes. Or at least knows who is, and how to put it to them. Put another way, the domain experts are usually the best people to describe the tradeoffs but often don't have a sufficiently broad view to make the decisions. Obviously this isn't universal - one key skill in engineering management is empowering your team to make all the decisions they can most usefully make, and facilitating their input to the ones they can't. > As for capabilities, a great manager will present what needs to be done to the team, and the team will decide what effort will be required. I think this really misses the point. With a great manager, a team will fire on all cylinders; rarely is this true without at least a good one (exceptions made for small, experienced teams in certain circumstances). You are describing more of a project manager "hat", which sometimes is worn by an engineering manager, but need not be.