This micro-management of the entire software development process...
I've been there. I've also been in the opposite, where there really is no technical leadership. I can't say it's better.
For what it's worth, certain agile techniques do provide a structured way to make clear group decisions. Unfortunately those decisions usually revolve around development methodology and not, you know, the design of the actual product.
Point being, micro-management is often a broad reaction to a vacuum of technical leadership. But instead of innovating, with the team makeup in mind, on how to make sure good decisions emerge, a manager will figure they need to personally make those decisions. So they need more structure to make sure they're better informed, and agile techniques tend to get hijacked to that end.
Yes, but that's my point. If you have a lack of technical leadership, then you need a different set of developers and need to look at who you're hiring as developers, not whether you need more management of the group of developers. For the cost of a technical manager, you can add quite a bit of salary to each developer position in a small group.
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I've been there. I've also been in the opposite, where there really is no technical leadership. I can't say it's better.
For what it's worth, certain agile techniques do provide a structured way to make clear group decisions. Unfortunately those decisions usually revolve around development methodology and not, you know, the design of the actual product.
Point being, micro-management is often a broad reaction to a vacuum of technical leadership. But instead of innovating, with the team makeup in mind, on how to make sure good decisions emerge, a manager will figure they need to personally make those decisions. So they need more structure to make sure they're better informed, and agile techniques tend to get hijacked to that end.
Yes, but that's my point. If you have a lack of technical leadership, then you need a different set of developers and need to look at who you're hiring as developers, not whether you need more management of the group of developers. For the cost of a technical manager, you can add quite a bit of salary to each developer position in a small group.