A well-rounded team manager in a software development project is critical to its success. Having the best developers only gets you so far. Without proper leadership, the project will most likely fail. Developers won't know what direction to go, deadlines won't be met, and the end product will not be created to the specifications as set forth in the project. A software development team manager needs to possess both the proper technical skills to guide the developers when they get stuck, but more importantly have the proper people skills and business process skills to allow the team to work as a well-oiled machine. In this paper, we will look at two different types of team managers and how they affect the software development lifecycle.
