--- title: The Manager as Riverbank | daily.dev description: Drawing on Watts Humphrey's Personal Software Process and Team Software Process, this essay argues that top-down prescriptions for how people work — whether... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-manager-as-riverbank-alwrhwjss twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The Manager as Riverbank | daily.dev og:description: Drawing on Watts Humphrey's Personal Software Process and Team Software Process, this essay argues that top-down prescriptions for how people work — whether... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-manager-as-riverbank-alwrhwjss og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/aLWrHWjss.png og:image:alt: The Manager as Riverbank og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The Manager as Riverbank **[Medium](https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Drawing on Watts Humphrey's Personal Software Process and Team Software Process, this essay argues that top-down prescriptions for how people work — whether software methodologies or AI tool rollouts — tend to fail because they replace personal habits with official ones. Instead, managers should treat individual experiments as data, keep conversations about what works open, and translate organizational constraints into language teams can invent around. The manager's real job may be less about designing processes and more about protecting the conditions under which good processes can be discovered organically. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Should managers become hands-on again?](https://daily.dev/posts/should-managers-become-hands-on-again--iyhdsoyns) · Tech Lead Digest · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The death and revival of the hands-on Engineering Manager](https://daily.dev/posts/the-death-and-revival-of-the-hands-on-engineering-manager-zzd2j1juj) · Manager.dev · 81 upvotes · 11 comments - [The Manager’s Path in the Age of AI](https://daily.dev/posts/the-manager-s-path-in-the-age-of-ai-ffiuk8oc3) · Camille Fournier · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Things I’ve learned in my 10 years as an engineering manager](https://daily.dev/posts/things-i-ve-learned-in-my-10-years-as-an-engineering-manager-lua0senes) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Engineering managers who build are pulling ahead](https://daily.dev/posts/engineering-managers-who-build-are-pulling-ahead-h2v7zdcvb) · LeadDev · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#productivity](https://daily.dev/tags/productivity), [#leadership](https://daily.dev/tags/leadership), [#company-culture](https://daily.dev/tags/company-culture) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-manager-as-riverbank-alwrhwjss) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The Manager as Riverbank","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-manager-as-riverbank-alwrhwjss","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-manager-as-riverbank-alwrhwjss"},"datePublished":"2026-08-09T01:52:09.421Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T21:21:20.012Z","description":"Drawing on Watts Humphrey's Personal Software Process and Team Software Process, this essay argues that top-down prescriptions for how people work — whether...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/e42e20624d9376fc8b31cb2d9280ff58?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/e42e20624d9376fc8b31cb2d9280ff58?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Medium","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Medium","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/medium","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-manager-as-riverbank-alwrhwjss","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"productivity,leadership,company-culture","timeRequired":"PT6M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Medium","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"The Manager as Riverbank"}]} ```