Should people only having management background be heading software engineering projects / departments

Question

Do you guys think that people with no technical background or people who have been in technical organizations but have not passed through technical ranks should be promoted and made heads of a technical project or development teams. For example a person who has never been a software developer being made a project manager for a software project just because he has a management degree! I have seen software projects being badly handled by the top tier just because they are not able to understand which things should be given priority and which not. For example, they don't understand that they cannot pull the developer into two hour meetings everyday as he has to work and get the development work done.

Also what is it with the managers that they like having meetings? Nothing comes out of these meetings and extra time is wasted. If the project manager is a person with strong software background, he will never have to call a status meeting. He would actually know what all of his team members are doing and where they will have problems, just because he has been through the same phase once in his career.

Isn't this ironic, that people who don't know what baking is are put in charge of delivering a world class cake?

Answer 1

Definitely not. Nothing good can come out of that.

Also what is it with the managers that they like doing meeting ? Meetings can be different. I cannot say they are all bad.

Answer 2

I would say yes & no

Yes, because a good manager would try to get the minimum skills to know what he is managing. That's part of the role "being" a manager. In industry not only IT manager are managing project that are not in their "skill" set but they should adopt.

No, even mentioning the point before in my personal experience I have meet such situation and it turns out most of those managers don't try to learn what they are dealing with but just try to applicate methods they have learnt in school and that's doesn't work.

so my answer is basically it depends who.

Answer 3

It depends how well they treat other people. It certain can strain the relationship. However if the person understands that developers/creative types aren't widgets and are subject to coders block, and other issues.. I believe there is potential for a good manager.

Answer 4

Hi

No problem with non-technical managers, so long as they can manage. Far better a competent manager without a technical background than a technical wizard with no aptitude for nor interest in management. Of course, one of the requirements for management competency without technical background is the ability to get and act on good technical input from those with the background.

Keep me away from programmers who've been promoted too far.

Regards

Mark

Answer 5

Yes absolutely. Lets start with the obligatory quote from Brooks' Mythical Man-Month: "Managing a software project is more like other management than most programmers believe".

Yes, it's true that it's also more different from managing other types of project than most managers believe so you need a manager who appreciates that. A manager who has no experience of software is unlikely to do very well with a software project but that doesn't mean that only people who have been developers can make good software managers.

In fact, quite the reverse. The vast majority of software developers and architects, even (especially!) those in senior roles do not make very good managers precisely because they lack management experience and may also lack any aptitude or desire for management.

Answer 6

Project management has nothing to do with technical aspects of project itself. This is a set of social skills and different technique to get job done. There are some advantages for project manager who is familiar with technical aspect of project Most of experienced software developers would be a nightmare in the role of project manager.

Answer 7

I'm lucky enough to have a technical lead, product manager and people manager. All three are technical, but only the technical lead does programming and guides us into creating great code and architecture. Our product manager gives us overall direction and prioritizes features but doesn't interfere with the codebase. The people manager is there for, well, management and team dynamics and passdowns from up high, and I don't interact with him/her on a daily basis. This is a system that's worked well for our organization.

In past projects, sometimes the product manager and technical lead were the same person, and that worked too.

Answer 8

I think Joel and Jeff said it appropriately in one of their podcasts.

You just need to know enough of the technical stuff to know when someone is BSing you.

Management, strangely enough, is largely about managing. Management rely on their more technical senior staff to summarise the technical details into a form that is appropriate for to make decisions on managing the project.

You can be the most knowledgeable technical person in the project, but that doesn't mean you know squat about management.

Answer 9

I can see two questions here:

1. Can a generalist without specialist software development knowledge and experience make a successful software manager?

2. Why incompetent software managers love meetings?

I’ll answer the latter first: meetings have several very attractive properties for incompetent managers:

• Meetings are group activity. Decisions are made by committee. A manager can sit back, listen and then sell other people ideas as his or her decisions.

• Meetings are visible. As opposed to someone just siting behind a desk doing some thinking and having to deliver regularly in order to justify the absence of visible physical activity. Meeting produces a set of tangible deliverables (i.e. meeting minutes), failure to deliver the project can always be blamed on an external cause.

• Meetings consist mainly of communication with very few managers doing any preparation in advance, I dare to say that most meeting are easier to engage in than prolonged periods of concentrations required to write a good spec, a project plan, create WBS, determine dependencies.

Hence a meeting can be turned into a group activity that requires minimum effort, but still creates a visibility of ongoing work.

The former question, i.e. can a generalist without specialist skills make a successful manager is much tougher to answer. Just two hundred years ago not much specialist knowledge existed (including management as a specialist discipline) and a good classical education was all what was needed to lead people. Twentieth century saw the explosion in technology, specialist knowledge and rate of knowledge change. Keeping up with a limited area of knowledge became a full time job. I dare saying that all modern highly successful companies have a management structure with people who have good understanding of the underplaying specialist detail forming its core. Eric Sink has a great article titled “Geeks Rule and MBAs Drool” on how technical detail influences drives financial and strategical decisions.

Still generalist can function fairly successfully as a head of technical unit, as long as he or she carries out administrative and political tasks, relying on specialists for getting done any actual work and trying not to cripple their efforts too much. I’m talking manager rather representing the unit, than managing day-to-day work and trusting the specialists to manage themselves. Right now this is a dominant scenario for most cost centres in modern run-of-the-mill companies.

Answer 10

I have found that it can go either way depending on the person. I think to manage a techinical project effectively, you need to at least be willing to get some techincal education from your techinical people if you don't have it.

What I have seen though is that people who go straight to managment without ever having been at the worker level in any field are often not good managers as they have no understanding of anything except the almighty dollar and tend to be short term thinkers and they think the people who work for them are interchangable parts. The MBA with no previous work experience has destroyed many a company (read about Enron for good examples of this). This is of course my own opinion based on my own experiences. Your mileage may vary. And I'm not talking about MBAs who got work experience before getting their MBA.

Answer 11

It is just my take.

People with Management background may have but not necessarily in every case. Software Projects should be lead by people who have mix of both management skills as well as technical skills.

Answer 12

NO!

There's nothing worse than trying to get resolution on a programming dilemma/conflict from a non-technical manager.

A degree shouldn't be the basis for any hiring/promoting; character and skills (technical and people) should be.