Critical staff turnover

• Personal stress issues that are related to the project's working environment.

• Employees that don’t know what they are working on next week.

• Expressed lack of flow-conditions

• Expressed disrespect for management prioritizations.

• Engineers and developers who are worried about technical debt.

• Short-term financial arguments that are stronger than long-term technical arguments.

In simple projects, management can lead based on a sovereign knowledge of the project’s tasks.

They can’t do that in complex projects. One implication is that employee-level knowledge is much higher than at the management level. The project team members have the required detailed knowledge to make decisions. If the management structure still expects the middle management to be “in control”, but they don’t have the needed knowledge, they will make poor decisions, leading to poor quality and substantial rework. Critical, because from the engineer's point of view, it is very obvious that it is a poor decision, and he also knows what it means for his possibility to shine.

Establish a culture that retains and attracts creative, motivated employees. Show deep respect for their long-term technical concerns. Embrace autonomous teams and adjust middle management’s incentives accordingly. 

Employees' expectations for the final quality, specifically from those who are leaving. Listen carefully to those who care and are worried, they can easily have a point that is critical to project success in the long term.

Middle management’s ability to retain the “right” employees.