Collective Wisdom from the Experts 39
Your replacement could be a project manager from another team, but some-
one from your own team is probably the better choice. A team member will be
more familiar with the project, and this gives him/her a tryout run serving in a
leadership role. In some organizations, the business analyst can be a good fit as
an interim “you.” This person knows the requirements intimately, and should
know the basic mechanics of how to run your development iterations if you’ve
been involving the stakeholders at-large all along, as you should.
In agile development, the concept of the self-directed team is both impor-
tant and powerful. The idea is that the project manager puts in place easy-
to-understand and highly visible processes that the entire team follows. Over
time, as the team adopts these processes, the project manager does less and less
managing, and more and more facilitating. Essentially, removing obstacles and
resolving issues replaces day-to-day micromanaging.
One of the delightful byproducts of a smoothly running, self-directed team is
that the project manager’s appropriately timed vacation can become almost a
nonevent. Even if you are not around for a few days, the machine keeps run-
ning itself.
Certainly schedule your vacations to make sure you are available for project
releases, but definitely take time off. And never cancel a vacation just because
you think the project will grind to a halt without you.