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your role is to “grease the wheels” by providing an environment in which work gets done.
And the best way to provide that environment is to show the team that you trust them to
do the work. Show the team that you are there for them when they need you. When you
make decisions about the project, make sure that you are always fair, just, consistent, and
predictable. That way, when people disagree with you, they can at least understand why
you made that decision and will remain motivated and loyal to the project.
Avoid Common Management Pitfalls

Poor managers are distinguished by their poor habits. They tend not to question their own
authority, and they frequently don’t have much faith in the people who work for them.
They distance themselves from their projects, and tend to see their jobs as simple, intui-
tive, easy, and straightforward. A manager who acts this way projects hubris and arro-
gance; some people find that reassuring, but most engineers find it condescending. The
best way to improve as an engineering project manager is to avoid these pitfalls.
The best way to avoid these pitfalls is to question each decision that you make:

• Is the decision based on facts, or are you automatically jumping to a decision based
solely on intuition and gut instincts?
• Are you unfairly questioning your team’s honesty, integrity, or skill?
• Are you making a decision that is politically motivated? Are you simply siding with the
person you like better?
• Are you oversimplifying a task or avoiding its internal details out of laziness?

By understanding the root cause of many common pitfalls, a project manager can keep his
team motivated and avoid bad decisions that lead to serious project problems. It requires
constant vigilance to avoid those problems.

Don’t manage from your gut

There is a common belief among many managers that decisions should make intuitive
sense. This is generally true. However, the converse—that all ideas that make intuitive
sense are good decisions—is definitely not true. Software projects are complex. They

involve many people serving in different roles, sometimes with multiple roles per person.
They involve numerous tasks and subtasks, where each task may be assigned to several
people. As a manager, you can’t expect to intuit all of that complexity. Just because you,
as the project manager, have the authority to make decisions about the project, that
doesn’t mean that it’s your job to overrule people all the time. It’s your job to understand
the issues that face the team, and to help the team deal with those issues.

Think about it rationally: if a team member disagrees with a decision that you have made,
and comes up with a well-researched and logical explanation for her disagreement, is it
fair to dismiss her opinion simply because it does not immediately make intuitive sense to
you? There are many things in the world (especially in complex engineered products) that
simply are not intuitive to most people.

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