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?