You Could Fix It Yourself. Maybe You Shouldn’t...

Early in my transition from software developer to manager, a small bug came up during QA. I knew how to fix it, so I did. It was a straightforward change, and getting it out of the way seemed like a useful contribution.

Only afterward did I realize that an intern could have fixed it. We even had one on the team.

It might have taken them three times as long. They might have needed help understanding the problem or checking that the change worked. But working through those steps would have given them experience they could use on the next assignment.

The bug got fixed; the learning opportunity was missed.

Project managers face versions of this decision all the time. A status report needs correcting. A meeting needs organizing. A team member is struggling to work through a dependency. Taking care of it personally can feel like the responsible way to keep the project moving, especially when explaining the task would take longer than completing it.

Sometimes it is. But a project also benefits from people becoming more capable of handling the work. If every small task goes to whoever can finish it fastest, the team has fewer opportunities to develop that capability.

The Fastest Fix Has a Cost

“I can do this faster myself” is often true. An experienced project manager can probably correct a status report, chase down an overdue response or prepare a …