> 1 person handle the role of product, project, and engineering manager with 100% focus on the project and team.
This is incredibly difficult to get right. A good product manager needs to be spending time "in the field", sometimes literally but always in terms of focus. A good engineering manager has to be spending time "in the lab", again literally & figuratively.
These two things are in contention, and balancing them properly in one person is very difficult.
Anyone who has project management skills can do that part, but trick is dedicating enough time to it. On a complicated project, this can easily become a full time job.
matrix management has it's own challenges (not that this is the only way to handle it) but your contention that because there are 3 "managers" involved means that everyone "has" 3 managers just isn't true. Most of this stuff is about responsibilities, not chain-of-command.
This is incredibly difficult to get right. A good product manager needs to be spending time "in the field", sometimes literally but always in terms of focus. A good engineering manager has to be spending time "in the lab", again literally & figuratively.
These two things are in contention, and balancing them properly in one person is very difficult.
Anyone who has project management skills can do that part, but trick is dedicating enough time to it. On a complicated project, this can easily become a full time job.
matrix management has it's own challenges (not that this is the only way to handle it) but your contention that because there are 3 "managers" involved means that everyone "has" 3 managers just isn't true. Most of this stuff is about responsibilities, not chain-of-command.