97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know

Chapter 22. Empowering Developers: A Man Named Tim

Ken Sipe

OFTEN THE BEST THING a software project manager can do is set the vision, set the priorities, and get out of the way. Here's a true story about a man named Tim.

We found we needed another team member on our project, so we posted the opening and began to interview. One individual soon rose to the top of our candidate list.

His name was Tim. Tim stood out significantly from the other applicants, and it would have been a "no-brainer" decision to hire him. But, there was one dissenting vote. All resources hired into our department may rotate between any one of three project managers. One of those PMs had previous experience working with Tim and indicated that he lacked motivation. She painted a picture of Tim web surfing regularly while on the job, and being a slacker.

This was a tough situation. When making a hiring decision, more weight would normally be applied to a project manager's personal experience with the candidate as compared to a cold interview. However, from a technical perspective, Tim's skills significantly exceeded those of other candidates. He was hired despite the dissenting vote. The project was run using an agile development methodology, so we had an open meeting at the start of the iteration.^[8]

The opening meeting has several main purposes:

1. Stories^[9] are created and their priority is established and communicated, ...