I met recently with a manager of a technical team. In the conversation he - a non-techie - mentioned that you don’t have to be technical to manage a technical team, thereby implying that if you are technical that you can’t manage a technical team. I was a bit dismayed by this insight. I don’t believe it one bit. A corollary to this thought is having a non-creative person in charge of a creative team.

Managers have a lot of responsibilities. One of which is to help a team resolve differences and problem when they arise. A non-technical manager is no help to a technical team that encounters a problem.

As with most things, a good manager is a function of the person, their attitudes, and the attitudes of the team members. My questions are what makes a good manager, is a manager with technical expertise better suited for managing a technical team or vice versa?

This entry was posted on Friday, January 5th, 2007 at 2:28 pm and is filed under Questions, Web Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.