I actually agree with you a good amount. I was never saying that you don't need management, just that first you need quality people. I do think you can have a good team with poor managers that still preforms, but I can't think of any examples of great managers with bad teams that excel.

Well first I would say that a team of quality people wouldn't all run in their own direction. They would know they need to coordinate to achieve a goal. Quality doesn't just mean being good at programming, it means the whole process of delivering software.

The sports metaphor is starting to break down, but just to have a one more go. Sports is different because the top teams all have top 1000 players in the world. This won't really happen in software. So with software it's more about putting together the right team. One where people enhance the whole, and that's what I think the biggest role of management is about. It's helping coordinate quality people.

The thing I was speaking out against was that you could have a good manager with a good process and not great people. The idea that the process can hide the problems of the team is something I don't believe. It doesn't matter how you organize if thats the case, nothing of real value will get made.

I do like the idea that the total result is a multiplayer of the two values. I just think the team quality is a little more of a multiplier than the other :)