Brad Frost wrote a blog post about the difference between brick and mortar roles.
“Mortar people serve as the glue that helps hold the bricks together, which leads to sturdier projects.”
“Unlike clearly-defined bricks, mortar peoples’ job responsibilities are murky. They fill in the gaps. They can float between high-level and in-the-weeds work and work with different disciplines. And while they might have a core concentration (the stem of the T), they have a solid understanding of most areas of a project (the cross bar of the T).”
“These people are harder to hire, and harder to place neatly into a project plan’s spreadsheet. But they’re just as essential to a successful project as bricks.”