It Depends on what you mean by "Manage"
I guess it depends on what you mean by "Manage". Sure, someone needs to keep the lights on, make sure there's paper for the printers, etc. but waht I am getting at is not writing down what is going on (whcih I still maintain can't be done by peoplewho can't understand what is going on), but actually making the hard choices about what to do and how to do it. I have seen purely administrative people (you might call them "secretaries" or "administrative assistants" add value to technical projects, but that's because they are pushing paper that otherwise engineers would have to push. The problem comes when they are put "in charge of the project". That's when they pretty consistently doom their projects.
To use the doctor analogy, if anadministrator told a surgeon to "cut here rather than over here" or "use this tool instead of that one" or "Patient A deserves more of your time than Patient B" (which is the exact equivalent to what "in charge" software managers have to do) you aregoing to have dead bodies on your hands and angry surgeons being at least as outraged as Paul was.
