Having been a manager myself and after reading umpteen books by John Maxwell and Les Brown, the only advice I'll give you is to value and nurture them. Don't tell them what they should do, show them what they should do and they will start following you as a leader. Lead by example, that's what this industry truly lacks.

I submit a few items but by no means a comprehensive list. What the other posters submitted covers it.

• My favorite project managers have had some technical footing. So when I say X is hard for this reason, they trust me and don't ask for X to get done by yesterday.
• Remove the obstacles for your team that don't require their technical expertise.
• Shield your team from unreasonable expectations and scope creep from other stakeholders.
• Add a buffer to every estimate. Engineers are notorious for underestimating.
• Familiarize yourself with and mitigate for software development anti-patterns
• Don't do anything that Pointy-haired Boss in Dilbert would do.

For me, there 3x2 sides to observe here :

1. Technical - Individual & Team aspect
2. Emotional - Individual & Team
3. Communicational - Individual & Team

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TIPS :

• You are in charge of each. But you don't OWN anything. Neither the team, neither teammates.
• You are the responsable if the project fail, not the team.
• The team is the responsable if the project success, not you.
• You have to decide (rarely as possible), when the team can't does it.

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That said, for each part, you & your team have to define :

• What is GOOD and what is WRONG. (Technically, Emotionally & Communicationally); (In public for the team ; In private for each member).
• How to reach the GOOD and how to avoid the WRONG.
• (The very difficult part) How to measure if you are going GOOD or going BAD.

One time by month, you have to iterate and do it again. As a ritual.

And don't forget, a good manager try to pull THE BEST of each teammate... even if it's not the BEST for your company. If each teammate is aware of this : (i.e your first task is to pull the best of them, with all the tools you have build together), you will build a something based on trust and respect. Not on fear and authority.

And of course, dude, don't forget to be yourself, to be human (with all goodness and badness, fears and joys, don't hide yourself behind the authority. Use the authority like a tool, not a mask).

Authority is like cooking, just having some good recipes and applying them with care.

I think that there are a couple of general rules of thumb, but as long as you try to reach understandings with the individual programmers everything will turn out fine. With that said, here are a couple of things that will keep workplace happiness at a high.

Do:

• Offer encouragement.
• Set boundaries. Don't be the boss who says "You'll know what percentage of the time you need to be working hard... and if you don't work the right amount of time you'll get fired." That typically either leads to overworking by the employees or under-working, and always brings anxiety.
• Let them know that you understand and sympathize with their feelings, even if you can't or won't change anything.
• Get to know the people you manage. If you know them and they know you personally, they'll be a lot more likely to accept rules without hard feelings.
• As @theonlyrealtodd said, encourage employee development. If you can, organize classes for all who want to learn new skills, or host people to give seminars before or after-hours. Your employees will appreciate that you care about them and their professional development.because they decided societal customs, counseled their leaders, and appointed governmental leaders.

Don't:

• Be unduly critical or sarcastic
• Belittle complaints
• Bend over backward to fix a complaint that won't help your team as a whole

If you follow these tips, hopefully you'll have a great workplace environment and those you manage will like and respect you.

Simple - they are the people who are doing the job, keep them happy.

Give them cool game/movie/programming t-shirts. It always works :)

And food. Lots of good food.

Hey Arthur Brownl of your above points you mentioned. As you told now working with a team of 9 members, you should start thinking in that way and need to mark few point:

• Involve all your team members for all possible discussion.
• Before pushing any process let them also to analyse whether proposed process is going to help or not.
• Always try to server scope is pieces or in very simple and smart way. Smart program managers are keen on managing a realistic scope. You should work closely with the parties involved and ‘squeeze out’ the ambiguity in the scope definition that ends up in contractual documents, project plans and schedules.
• Help team to understand the future of piece of code/function/release by pointing in the right direction by providing clarity. Let them to comeback with some plans to scale your features.
• You should also help them to do some experiment because this experiment will help all f your team members to learn hell alot.
• As a program manager you should not react as a robot. I agree, numbers are important, deadlines are important, and clients are important. But if that’s all you care about, you might as well just replace your heart with a battery pack.
• And finally you should always Train Your Team for Success and for this you should not do-follow up blindly, you should do some home work before this to express that tag line more effectively.

I do not know if developers can help you here because managing and development are in fact two different things. Usually problems stem from the fact that they both see their side of the task and think the other party has less work load. The truth is both are hard and I think if both parties would start to see the value added by the other, then harmony would have been achieved easier.

Jayme Edwards has some nice videos explaining these, I really like them:

• youtube.com/watch
• youtube.com/watch
• youtube.com/watch

So it boils down to this, to manage a healthy relationship:

• First be careful not to burn your devs out.
• Most importantly, let them speak what they think for a new feature that is to be implemented. In the end they are the people who will implement this.
• If there are some company rules to be complied, instead of blandly forcing them, explain them the benefits of why such rule is beneficial for them in the first place.

I've never felt that it needs to be super complicated. Good management can be rather simple:

1. Figure out what tasks need to be done.
2. Delegate these tasks to the proper people with the proper timing. This includes open and attentive communication so that your employees can get the task completed with adequate assistance when needed, but not micromanagement.
3. Don't be a jerk - if you don't know what that means, you won't learn from this post anyway.
4. Listen to your employees... This doesn't mean you have to do everything they want but it means that you do actually listen to them and you do take action where necessary.
5. Encourage employee growth. Check with everyone on your team and for those who are interested in advancing certain skills or their career, help them to do so... It helps the organization as well.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite talks on the subject: