Comments on: Coding can make you a better project manager

By: David Murphy

David Murphy — Fri, 28 Aug 2015 22:11:00 +0000

The principle is sound but the two main risks I see are:
1). When you don’t code regularly the overhead of learning or relearning can be very high, and the costs of mistakes also high. I worked as a programmer years ago but truth be told I was never great at it – adequate would be a good description.
2). As a manager your main role is to ensure the team can do what it needs to do – you as manager run interference, facilitate, remove blockers, keep the external stakeholders happy and off the team’s backs etc – this is usually pretty much full time. if you get distracted into coding you risk not doing the coding well, becoming an impediment yourself and doing a less than optimal job of managing the issues that can negatively affect the team.

Years ago I wa a programmer on a project that ht some troubles and the project manager (who had started as a programmer on that system years before) got involved with coding. What he wrote worked as such, but left sub-optimal code and also obscure defects that took weeks to work through. His contribution had some value when he did it (got us over a hump)_ but left longer term issues that probably outweighed his involvement.

Not saying you should not get involved but bear in mind the potential downsides as well as the potential upsides.

By: Wesley Tiago Zapellini

Wesley Tiago Zapellini — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 21:18:00 +0000

In reply to Rodrigo Cardoso Vieira.

Hi Rodrigo!

That’s a very good point. It can happen if the manager becomes the person responsible for unpleasant tasks related to code. As you said it can hide pain points.

A good approach is to treat coding as another tool in a manager’s toolbox. The idea is not to transform the manager into a chore guy, is to make him capable to help in a new way when is reasonable to do so.

Thanks for the feedback 🙂

By: Rodrigo Cardoso Vieira

Rodrigo Cardoso Vieira — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 16:42:00 +0000

Hi Wesley. I agree with you that coding can put you closer to the developers, that it can make both of you speeking the same language. But, as a scrum master or agile coach, don´t you feel that when you code you are not permiting the developers to learn something about their jobs or to improve how they do their jobs?

I think that we improve the way we do our jobs when we feel some pain. Example: outdate manifests, eventually, would cause pain to developers. Devs would do some boring work updating manifests. Devs could start to think in a way to automate this part of their jobs.