Forgetting the other most important role, coaching people on the team. And yet another one, shelter from outside unrest. Oh, and blame-absorber. And coordinating efforts, when yet again three engineers in three different places work on the same issue.
You know, this is starting to resemble the "what have the romans ever done for us" skit :)
I'm not disagreeing that many managers don't do this. Or that they do it badly. But managers, when they work properly, do a lot more than liaising.
That's the thing, though. Almost no one does their job "properly". They do it well enough to not get fired - thus management is usually inept and useless. So is it the managers fault when they are just fulfilling the norm or is it the job all together? I would suggest management as a position is at fault rather than the people who occupy that space and do the minimum to get by.
Coaching happens naturally within a well-functioning team.
Sheltering a lot of times means that the team is not aware of key information they should be aware of.
Coordination can be accomplished via proper use of communication tools.
Managers have the power to insert themselves at the critical junctions of natural process flows in order to artificially increase their own importance.
The funny thing is, if you do all those things, but you don't "liaise", then it's very likely that your job-title isn't "manager", but rather "administrative assistant." Sadly, I've never heard of a team of engineers having a dedicated admin assistant.
A lot of corporate malaise could be solved, I think, by
1. giving each team the budget to hire their own admin assistant to coordinate and coach for them (but to leave the liase-ing to the team lead), and then
2. firing all the middle-management layers that now serve literally no purpose.
You know, this is starting to resemble the "what have the romans ever done for us" skit :)
I'm not disagreeing that many managers don't do this. Or that they do it badly. But managers, when they work properly, do a lot more than liaising.