Appearances are Deceiving It's not the first time the team has been caught with their pants down like this. In fact, this was a common problem during my time with the team. The lack of a full-time manager meant that a large number of tasks fell on the shoulders of employees that shouldn't have. Even worse, it was left up to several individuals to fill roles that required more than one person. With that in mind, I went through my own records and found that I had also worked two roles for a time with no manager. I spent an embarrassing amount of time on a team that had two development managers and three people to fill each of the roles. I spent three months working on UI engineering on a project as part of another team when the rest of my team was too busy to add a developer. While many individuals had manager titles, few if any had sufficient time to actually lead the team and do the other duties that a manager should have been doing. That is a problem. In the same vein, I remember taking over a project as the new manager while a full-time manager was on vacation. I remember a lot of uncertainty and wondering how to properly execute on some of the roles in my plan. I also remember taking on a couple of features for the team while still worrying if the manager was going to accept all of my deliverables. The lack of structure for non-leading roles resulted in a very confusing experience for me at a time when I was trying to learn the ropes on how to run a team and how to lead people in those roles. I'm sure it was worse for others. This leads to another interesting point. A large number of positions could be filled by anyone who wants to take on that role without having to apply for them. The team doesn't have to actively search for candidates either. Anyone who shows up to an event or has a reputation is fair game to just pick up a new role. When that manager role is so easily filled, I wonder if it's actually needed. As a manager, I can attest that managers can be a very lonely job. A friend of mine in another company told me she didn't mind going through many cycles with no manager at all. On the surface it seems like a very interesting statement until you realize that her manager-less period was a product of the company not having any. The management roles were always filled, but no one was ever promoted to full-time. The only one who ever did manage others was the one of the first people to join the company, but she never promoted others. When there is no person holding the lead role, there is no manager at all. In fact, there is no one keeping everyone on a level playing field. There was no one to check on the employees and make sure they are doing their job effectively. There was no one to help them out when they hit a bump in the road. There was no one to ensure that the people who were doing something that they were not are taken care of or moved into other roles. The only person in charge was the "leader" of the team, but it wasn't his job. Lack of leadership means no leveling, and thus teams tend to remain quite siloed. People don't do things on behalf of the team because they are the team. They do things on behalf of themselves or on behalf of their level of skill set, and usually only for the length of their project. The result of this is no team involvement at all. It's one huge self-organizing matrix with individuals working independently because there is no one to "organize" them into a unit. I have spoken with multiple individuals who have worked for this type of organization. Most have no idea where any one person in the company even works (because there was no "headquarters" to talk to). No one was doing their job as part of a team. No one was doing any of their jobs that were assigned to them as part of a team. The only team was the one comprised of the managers and whoever worked under them. That's why the team I ran had no clue what their objectives were or where any one person stood in relation to the team. It's the same reason that no one had the same vision for how the team should work. That's why people on my team were doing different things, not because of their level or area of expertise, but because of who they had reporting to them. The team only had the same person in management multiple times during my tenure, and each time it seemed like the team got an entirely new personality (the "leader" of the team had a new role every few months or so). "Do more with less" sounds like a good thing. On the surface it's a great way to keep on staff those that want to work more and use the same amount of work on more people. That sounds ideal, right? Well, no. I would argue that in that type of organization, people don't feel as though they have a purpose or work on something they know is going to be useful to the company. Instead, people often work on the projects they personally find interesting, which tend to be things that they are good at. In a healthy team, everyone wants to do their best work because they know that the team needs them, and when all of them are working their best, the overall output goes up as well. You will often hear the question of why one person is always doing all of the work for an important project. What that means is that there are no other people working on it. It doesn't matter how many people are there; if one person has been working on it and is really good at it, the other people will follow the lead. When the project is successful, they are all given more to do. The reverse is also true. If that project goes off the rails, everyone on the team feels it. On a similar note, it doesn't matter if a few people know how to use a technology better than everyone else. What matters is whether or not the team has the team skill set to pull it off. As a team, they would find someone who they can share the work. When a lot of people use the same technology, the skill level of those who don't reach as high as others will be the deciding factor in which technology is used. If it's a common enough technology, they will have been able to learn it at some point. It's not impossible to find competent developers using the same technology who are also good to work with. It does depend on how big the organization is, though. Being diverse in skills does come at a cost, and that cost can be high. While the total cost can be spread out among a team, individual salaries often won't cover the cost for the team to find another developer who doesn't have that skill set or is at a significantly higher salary. An alternative for that type of organization would be to have more managers. While this has a lot of problems of its own, the teams would have a better chance of being able to find one person who has the right skills for that area of expertise or has some previous experience and can mentor someone else who is new to it. Instead of a manager being the sole person that can do so, multiple people can help each other and cover for each other when they are gone. A team full of people who are more than capable of making good technical decisions will be far more successful than one filled with mediocre programmers and no clue what to do with themselves. To accomplish this, people need to have a sense of team work and need to know that the group they are a part of will allow them to shine. How that team gets their work done is secondary. A developer working alone is going to be doing a better job on his own work, but there will never be a truly great developer in such an environment. It doesn't matter if they are doing the same thing, or something completely different, as long as the result is beneficial for the company. A team lead who has people reporting to him that they like and know is going to put more time and care into everyone's work. This is good for everyone on the team. Everyone has someone who is looking out for their needs and taking care of them. In one company that I worked for, there was a single manager and eight managers who were filling all of the other roles. I would argue that those managers were doing a poor job, since there were just too many managers. Not everyone is a manager, even though I did mention before that they could be chosen at the drop of a hat. So, what should a team do? To be honest, there is no answer to this question. There is no one size that fits all. Each organization will have its own needs that we may not even see as teams and will have to figure out the best way to accomplish their work. Some organizations are just large enough to hire more people with the proper skills to take on the leadership roles in a self-managed environment. The problem is that there needs to be a lot of awareness on the part of the team as to how everyone benefits from each other and that each individual knows how his role will help the team as a whole. While I'm sure there are other factors at play, the more important questions that can help you determine if you have the right type of team for your organization include: Does each individual have a role to play in keeping the team successful? Do all members