[tedmiston]

I'm probably a bit of an edge case as a self-employed independent contractor. My comments were a reflection from good / bad past managers. I count hours for billing, but focus on output over hours.

Managing output over hours is definitely challenging and probably more of an art than a science, especially in an agile environment. I've found sprint pointing can help but is still pretty imperfect. I don't know if anyone necessarily does it super well, but as a manager you can help motivate and manage expectations so that your team members are each giving it their all and doing work that they care about. IMO people don't need much motivation when the work is interesting.

I'm starting to experiment more with time boxing vs scope boxing personally. Definitely a challenge in environments where scope is not clearly defined.