Is the role “Project Manager” always necessary or desirable? (WIP)

Posit: Small, project focused teams of less than 10 people with a finite timeframe and well delineated (note: not “defined”) deliverable, work better as a cooperative team then a heirarchical organization. Titles and authority structures, while necessary for large diverse teams/projects, may actual inhibit the progress and the complete contribution of the members of a smaller team.

Classic “Project Manager” responsibilities include primary contact to outside parties, scheduler and convenor of meetings, decision facilitator and sometimes final decider. It often also includes the burden of chief scapegoat when projects fail.

As a project evolves from concept to feasibility check to analysis and design to development and deployment to hand-off or ongoing maintenance, the individual Project Manager is required to be infinitely versatile, always available, and quite frankly, always personally invested in the project.

Most humans placed in the Project Manager role are not that super. They are just average. As thus, they are prone to burn-out, frustration, and fatigue. This is normal.
They are also more specialized. They have certain strengths and weaknesses, be it technical skills, communication skills, political accumen, etc.

Another Approach
When the practical tasks of the Project Manager role trades off among members of the team, the average “Program Management Accuity” increases. In the ideal situation, no individual is “Project Manager”, the team is “Project Manager”.

When the team assumes the Project Management role by committee and delegates the communication task to an individual, better to a collaboration tool, then no individual is placed in a

Obviously, there are conditions and limits. All team members need to buy in to this approach. They all need to put the project goals above their own personal or political agendas. And they need to sign on to a few basic norms including that the majority rules. If the team is even numbered, they need a fool-proof tie breaking rule, e.g. appeal to a higher authority or flip a coin.

There are lots more thoughts around this but this is a conceptual Work In Progress (WIP).