The second most important thing is to make sure the guy with the checkbook agrees with this.  Worked myself out of a job once by not doing that, not on my timeline.<p>Actually both leads did the same thing, and I have no idea how they solved deep technical problems after that since the two of us were handling 75% of them...  Here were two expensive Devs not getting features done as fast as anybody else. Look at all the money I saved!