In many of these organizations, PMs serve to insulate the "planning and design" ICs from conversations with customers.
Not ideal either, IMO, ICs involved in planning and design should get out there and talk to customers themselves!
Not ideal either, IMO, ICs involved in planning and design should get out there and talk to customers themselves!
This is an important point, and should be more obvious than it is. Projects succeed or fail more as a function of individual personalities than of whatever their job titles are. Easy to forget given that people who share a job title are usually treated as interchangeable components of the machine (at least in big companies and at least in my experience).