Yes, this. Convincing managers to focus on the minimal viable implementation that users can start productively using sooner rather than later and building from there is a real art of senior developers in my experience.
A variation on this theme: years ago I had a manager who was a pretty solid developer who had written a lot of the mission critical code we were supporting. He moved up a couple rungs, got an MBA, brought in scrum (to replace a sclerotic waterfall process), and served as product owner on a lot of our products.
So he was involved in planning meetings and did a pretty good job of steering things there in his product owner role. But once planning was complete and development started, he couldn't resist getting in the ear of individual devs and project managers on the team to alter specs or dictate how he thought things should be implemented. This was after we had met, agreed on a design or strategy (with him present), and started (or even sometimes completed) implementation. It got to the point that we would joke about the stated requirements of a project and the on-the-way-to-the-bathroom requirements.
It really gnawed at both developers and the project managers who worked under him and were responsible for the day-to-day management of the projects. He developed a reputation among the team for being arrogant, aloof, and disrespectful even though that wasn't really his character at all and he was actually a pretty friendly easy-going guy who tried to do things right.
A variation on this theme: years ago I had a manager who was a pretty solid developer who had written a lot of the mission critical code we were supporting. He moved up a couple rungs, got an MBA, brought in scrum (to replace a sclerotic waterfall process), and served as product owner on a lot of our products.
So he was involved in planning meetings and did a pretty good job of steering things there in his product owner role. But once planning was complete and development started, he couldn't resist getting in the ear of individual devs and project managers on the team to alter specs or dictate how he thought things should be implemented. This was after we had met, agreed on a design or strategy (with him present), and started (or even sometimes completed) implementation. It got to the point that we would joke about the stated requirements of a project and the on-the-way-to-the-bathroom requirements.
It really gnawed at both developers and the project managers who worked under him and were responsible for the day-to-day management of the projects. He developed a reputation among the team for being arrogant, aloof, and disrespectful even though that wasn't really his character at all and he was actually a pretty friendly easy-going guy who tried to do things right.