Your second comment, the one about autonomy, is the real insight that I wish more developers and managers would get. I almost quit reading the article upon find

Your second comment, the one about autonomy, is the real insight that I wish more developers and managers would get. I almost quit reading the article upon finding the part you quoted. Thanks for pointing it out here! Way too often, real world discussions about management in teams turn into discussions about technical detail ("If we only had tests / quicker builds / used language X then we'd get better results") and this basic, underlaying problem of room for autonomy in the process is overlooked in favour of topics that are more easily discussed. The main reason I added this (mostly useless) comment was that all replies so far had followed the same pattern of only discussing the issue closest to technology; the tests. Edit: removed duplicated word.