The development manager is the functional line manager for software development. Lead developers and developers will report into a development manager. A development manager advocates for the development constituency in the MSF Team Model. A development manager is responsible for the capacity of the software development team as measured by metrics such as velocity, and for the variation in capacity and rate of productivity and quality as measured by metrics; such as unplanned work, work remaining, quality indicators, and actual quality versus planned velocity. The development manager takes responsibility for the continuous improvement and learning in the software development team. A development manager does not have direct responsibility for the flow of a project and the value in the product solution but instead works with the project manager to provide the resources to facilitate the smooth flow of the project through development.

A person assigned to this role should be added to the Project Administrator permissions group. This allows them to do all that they need to perform their function, such as create new projects, add people to the project team, and start a build.