<vent> Every day seems like it is eaten up by large projects moving through the company while you try and fit the smaller projects between them. One side effect that I've seen is the smaller stuff still needs project management but the project managers are so busy that it can just get left out of the overall mix. I've said it a thousand times that programmers should not be project managers. While there are a few that can do the job rather well, it just does not fit the bill for the majority of us. The catch to this all is that if these small projects slip through the cracks because of the lack of management it usually ends up backfiring on the programmer by having to meet unrealistic expectations at the end of the project. After talking to a couple of friends it seems like this is a universal problem in software development. Is there a simple answer to what seems to extremely simple issue of project managers just executing their task list? </vent>