What makes a great manager of software engineers?

Abstract

Having great managers is as critical to success as having a good team or organization. A great manager is seen as fuelling the team they manage, enabling it to use its full potential. Though software engineering research studies factors that may affect the performance and productivity of software engineers and teams (like tools and skill), it has overlooked the software engineering manager. On the one hand, experts are questioning how the abundant work in management applies to software engineering. On the other hand, practitioners are looking to researchers for evidence-based guidance on how to manage software teams. We conducted a mixed methods empirical study to investigate what manager attributes developers and engineering managers perceive important and why. We present a conceptual framework of manager attributes, and find that technical skills are not the sign of greatness for an engineering manager. Through statistical analysis we identify how engineers and managers relate in their views, and how software engineering differs from other knowledge work groups.