Every morning, medical doctors get together at a hospital ward to discuss the status of their patients, led by the ward boss, who happens to be another doctor.
Each doctor explains the medical conditions of his patience, what drugs he is administering, what exams he has ordered and performed, and what the prognosis is. The boss may suggest changing the exams and/or the drugs he is using, in case he feels that the doctor's approach is not conducent. Furthermore, he can suggest a new drug, new alternatives, and offer an experienced word on how previous patients with similar symptoms were treated.
Now, outside of the medical world... and back to our software development world... we have Agile Project Managers, who for the most part have never seen or written a single line of code. Yet they conduct a development team. How can that happen?
This is why I think they are by far the biggest waste of company's money. Somehow companies believe that anyone having taken a "Management" course can take the lead on a software shop. This is how we have people with absolutely no training in computers running software teams. The result, of course, is nothing but disaster.
These pseudo-managers, lacking the knowledge to appropriately run the show, have no choice but to rely on a developer to make the decisions they can't make. Such developer can easily see the opportunity to grow in power, eventually becoming influential on the manager's decisions, and the de-facto leader. Other developers in turn realize of the potential of becoming good friends with those protégé developers, to grasp any power this friendship can provide them. Eventually the whole development team becomes a fraternity, where a few developers end up running the show, project managers become just email-proxies (sending/receiving emails all day and that's it), and the whole company hierarchy is distorted.
So, "Agile Project Managers", if you don't have any background in Computer Sciences, a good 10 years of experience as a software developer using a variety of architectures and languages, please have some dignity and resign. I know there is quick easy money on reading a few Agile books, attending some PM conferences, and portraying yourself as a Manager... but the result is complete disaster for a Software team.
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