Why managing a software team can be more effective than "regular" management
Roy Osherove filed under people patterns Over on the team leadership mailing list, Yves claimed:
"Is leading a software team different then leading another team? No
it's not. Can it help to know about writing software?
yes if you can also let go of control.
(which you would have o do if you did not know software) "
I disagree.
Managing a software team is different than managing a non software team, in that software by definition is a soft thing - it rotates, mutates and changes form, and with proper automation, we can break down many time "barriers" which are not possible to break in the real world.
I touched a little bit on this in a previous post, where I said that in software, you can achieve immediate satisfaction, vs. life, where immediate satisfaction is wanted but is many times un-achievable.
The hidden skill: Automation
In software, you can teach and demand that a team break down many such "fake" barriers to be more productive, wheas in real life, there are things that as a manager you might accept as final truth ("mail always needs to be opened manually").
As a software lead, you have many more options to come in and change the flow of things by changing how the underlying team's infrastructure works (automated builds, deployments, tests etc..)
What other things are different in managing software teams?
Reader Comments (2)
I'm not sure I understand why you clailm managing a software team is different.
Yes we can get an immediate feedback in the sense of a working build and working version of the software.
But for me his is not "the result", the result is the end of an iteration.
The continous build shows us we make progress. That is something you will also see in a lot of other management evironments.
I agree without visual progress, it is harder to manage. Most agile techniques are visualizing status/progres.
So that makes it easy for an IT leader/manager. I'm pretty sure that other industries have similar progress indicators.
I believe managing a software team doesn't have to be that different from managing a normal team. But, the software manager should of course be familiar to the software process. I think the difference is in 'technical leadership'. As a software team lead, you should understand the process and the technique and be able to educate and train your developers. A tech-lead however, is not a manager. This is where software (or perhaps technical professions) differ. Normal projects don't need a team-lead next to a manager.