Let's start with flexibility and adaptability. There is an important difference between being flexible and being adaptable. To be a successful manager, I believe you need to have the ability to be both, as they go hand-in-hand, and you will need a combination of both in order to make a meaningful and positive impact on your team, project, or both.

Every developer will already think that they're flexible, on some level. This line of thinking grows from their own experiences where they have:

• Delivered something a little bit faster when requested to do so by the Project Manager
• Successfully bent logic to allow more permutations
• Made a calculation in a completely different way after a code review
• Allowed for a different exception handling method, even though it may not be used immediately

These are all things an experienced...

Communication skills are so important that it's worth repeating! I've repeated it three times because there are three logical parts to communication. Of course, you already communicated plenty when you were a developer.

You wrote emails, spoke on conference calls, and maybe even created reports and presentations and gave pitches.

Your communications have a different mission when you are a manager though. Your communications become less about explaining the logic or business knowledge and more about influencing and conveying visions, ideas, and concepts.

It's important to acknowledge the difference between a factual conversation and an opinion-based conversation that might be based on little or no information. For example, a project management meeting about the allocation of key resources is likely to be...

This skill is particularly applicable to team managers, but a large proportion of it is still applicable and useful for development, and especially project managers, who will be responsible for a project team.

As a new developer-cum-manager, this is likely to be the area where you have the least experience. So, it is vital that you acknowledge and analyze this, through the Johari Window, and build and use your support structure. Remember the impostor syndrome and consciously work to avoid it through open and honest dialogue with people whom you know well, as well as yourself!

In our Developer-to-Manager context, team leadership is the responsibility and stewardship of a group...

This is a key skill in most, if not all, careers. As developers or managers, we all have stakeholders to be accountable to and to satisfy by fulfilling their requirements and expectations. Specific to managers, but often forgotten, is the fact that their own team is a key stakeholder. This could be their own development team or a matrix project team.

As we have already discussed Skill 3 – Team leadership, which covers the main principles of managing your own team as key stakeholders, for the remainder of this chapter, our focus will be on stakeholder management from a project manager's perspective. This angle covers the remaining key aspects of the essence of stakeholder management, which boils down to building and maintaining relationships, and setting and meeting expectations.

The Association for Project Management (APM) explains...

Negotiations happen every day. People negotiate pretty much anything and everything. It's often quite casual, in a form that we might not even notice, but often it's formal as well, especially in a software project context.

The number, clarity, and feasibility of requirements, bug accuracy, and severity, availability of resources, priority of features, go-live date, release schedule, overall cost, and price, are all usual negotiation points. The agreed figure at the end is rarely, if ever, the original baseline.

For our purposes, and ease of illustration, let's just say there are only two parties involved: a supplier and a customer. As a manager, you will need to understand and appreciate the art of negotiation from both angles.

As the saying goes: An old poacher makes the best gamekeeper.

Empathy is a skill often associated with negotiation...

Which delivery methodology the project or team uses, if any, is not a manager's unilateral decision. It is the team's collective choice. Therefore, a good manager will not only realize this, but will also be prepared to adapt and embrace it. So, a good understanding of the most common software project methodologies is vital to a flexible manager's toolkit.

An effective Project Manager will facilitate the team's internal discussion to choose their methodology, as well as communicate it externally to inform other stakeholders. In this section, we will introduce the three most common methodologies:

• Agile
• Waterfall
• PRINCE2

There is no de facto best methodology in the real world. These three methodologies aren't even necessarily comparable or like-for-like. But neither are they conflicting or contradictory, either...

So, do you think you have most of these skills already? In the unlikely event that you do have these six top skills already, then that's a great achievement. Do keep in mind that there is always room for improvement, and learning is a lifelong endeavor. So, continue to improve these six skills, in addition to learning new ones as well. If you want to become, and continue to be, a successful and great manager, then this is a necessity, not a luxury.

If you feel you have some way to go, then don't worry; that is completely normal and okay. It's rare for a developer to have mastered these six skills without having real-world experience of being a manager. It is also an unreasonable expectation because even most experienced managers will still have some way to go!

Your task now is to truthfully assess how mature you are...

If you've still not decided which type of manager you want to become, now is the time to make a decision. While it is an important decision, there is always a chance to change even once you are in the role. But ideally, you want to get this decision right the first time, whatever right means for you.

Being a team, development, or project manager will entail similar and transferrable skills, but also a significant amount of role-specific skills, as well as knowledge, which comes with practice and real-world experience.

This section will cover various aspects of job hunting, which may seem general. But we will focus on how to position yourself so that a brilliant developer like you is taken seriously as a managerial candidate.

If you have ascertained your why, and you understand the true underlying motives, to make the Developer-to-Manager transition, then I can assure you that your journey will be meaningful and rewarding. The journey itself will be challenging and difficult at times, which is to be expected. Whether you will enjoy a professional life as a manager is a great question.

For me, I have no doubt that it has made my career more rewarding and interesting. I had the choice of continuing to test and develop software, which is how I began my career in IT. While I enjoyed writing and breaking code (preferably someone else's), I found myself wanting to learn more and more about the managerial side of the software business: the commercials, the development process, the team, and the people.

In short, I had a natural curiosity toward being a manager in the software business...

Perhaps you think you're ready, or perhaps you're not quite, but want to try it anyway.

To best illustrate this part, let's say it's an external position with another organization that you are going for, because that's likely to include all of the aspects of the internal option, with a bit of extra process and rigor.

When you are invited to an interview for a manager vacancy, there are a lot of different ways that the interview can go. But before you get to the interview itself, there are several things you should think about.

First, you should be clear on the type of manager role it is. Increasingly, the manager role is becoming more diverse and hybrid. Such a role usually includes elements of team, development, and project management all mixed in. It's always good to be clear on what this mix is, so that you can assess...

In this chapter, we took a journey through the six key skills that I believe are most important for you to focus on as a manager:

1. Flexibility and adaptability
2. Communication, communication, communication
3. Team leadership
4. Stakeholder management
5. Negotiation
6. Using a chosen methodology

These skills will see you through almost every situation you're ever going to meet. They're also incredibly well adapted for you as a new Developer-to-Manager! So, please keep these skills in your mind, and take every opportunity to explore and develop them further – through your own continuous research and the learning you gain every day as a manager.