It’s that culture of fear that I don’t understand: devs working on the wrong thing. More often than not, it usually means: Is the dev spending more time than me (who is not doing the work) is willing to give him? Every professional understands priority and expectations. And communication is all that is required. But PM usually don’t understand the nature of software development and fear of losing control (the bad ones). The good ones just let people work after they made it clear what should be worked on.
>Every professional understands priority and expectations. And communication is all that is required.
Sure--the kind of communication that is ensured by a brief daily standup (communication within the team) and a regular progress review with the stakeholders, like say, a sprint review every few weeks (external communication).
While it's true that every professional understands the idea of priority, the global priorities of a project may be very different from the individual priorities of a developer. A diligent, conscientious developer can still get caught up in a narrow problem that doesn't really move the project forward, even after the PM has "made it clear what should be worked on." Fire-and-forget is not a strategy for project success. Continuous communication and regular reviews/resets are a better way.
