Project Managers: unnecessary evil or golden unicorns?

In recent years development of IT projects became easy. Really — if you want to create an IT startup, you can do it without coding. Ok, with a little coding you create something better. But the problem is that everyone dives into coding, and then there’s interaction between two parties: business guys with money, and developers with coding skills.

And then there’s no middle level anymore which used to be project managers. Yes, those people who translate business language into technical requirements and keep everything on track. Do we not need them anymore?

In simple project, it seems that there’s no need for a separate manager — business idea guys think they are capable enough to manage the developers, and developers are, of course, better off without anyone telling them how to code. That’s on the surface.

In reality, that particular middle man is worth gold. If we look at them without any emotions, project managers save money/time. They not only translate business language into specification, but also convince the founder/sponsor what functions NOT to build — maybe something doesn’t make sense or can be postponed to version 2. Also, project manager is the one who can (should, at least) answer technical questions from developers, without getting to deep into the business stuff.

In my practice with dozens of small projects, project manager is very very important, and it’s sad that in recent years that position is getting less love. Maybe because it’s hard to be a GOOD manager, and those who try to be — they lower the profession “level” on the whole? Yes, in fact, I agree that bad PMs are worse than no PM…

So, just a train of random thoughts, with one main point — if your IT project doesn’t have a proper manager to coordinate all the things, will it be managed properly by developer(s)? Are you sure?