Did you ever encounter a well managed (or well functioning) team(s)? If so, why do you think they performed so well?

I had a period where I was on a team like that. We didn't have a manager.

Though some of my worst work periods was when I didn't have a manager either lol.

Great question. The best team I can name had these things going for them:

- Constrained scope (they were the UI team on an internal product; by the time they got their marching orders the whole thing was a very well understood problem domain)

- Excellent manager (he has infinite calm, deep empathy for the fact that real people are messy and complicated, and an incredible nose for time estimates). There was basically no amount of pressure up-chain could put on him that would shake his cool; he seems to be completely confident internally that the worst-case scenario is he goes and lands on his feet somewhere else.

As a result, his team was basically always happy and high-performing and he consistently missed up-chain expectations set by project managers above him who had to consistently report that UI wasn't going to be delivered on the timeline they set because they had taken his estimates and shaved three weeks off of them, only to discover that the estimates were dead-on and they were the liars. He was insulated from this by (a) keeping consistently good notes on his initial estimates, everything that bumped them, and the final deliverable dates and (b) having skip-level meetings where he could present all of this to his boss's boss clearly.