In Tech Lead Dairies, I am going to share my daily learnings from the experience of leading a technology team.
In this post, I will be sharing my learnings of getting into TechLead role as fresher.
Understanding the Role of Tech Lead
As I have become TechLead, I started trying to understand role first. Have searched in Google to know the Roles and Responsibilities of Tech Lead. Read some of Tech leadership books. Have gone through playlist of Dev lead conference videos and reflected back on the ways of my Past tech leads how they have Lead teams. I will share some of key learnings I have taken, to begin my journey …
Just 4 Steps ahead of team,
Leader should be 4 steps ahead of team to show them direction and avoid blockers. If Leader is far from team, one can’t hear of what team is thinking. If too near and part of group, can’t lead the team. Lets see, how this applies in leading software development team. Lead should code at-least 30 percent of time, so that he/she is aware of how developers are expressing in code.Also can think 4steps ahead of of team.
Butterfly model: A well rounded model for a Tech leadership,
I was taught this model in internal training of my company and it became my guiding model for me to reflect on each wing of model mentioned below.
Engaging with Business: Understanding business problems and collaborating for solving business problems.
Delivery and Risk: Technical delivery plan and maintaining tech debt.
Architecture and Infrastructure: Right solutions for the business problems.
Engaging with Team: Focusing on naturing the team.
http://www.engineeringandcareering.co.uk/2013/05/the-well-rounded-technical-lead-model.html
Tech Lead doesn’t need to know answers to all the problems,
I strongly believed that to be a Tech lead you need to be very strong in technology. I personally used to not have respect for leads with out strong tech knowledge. but, I often surprised to see few leads with out being very strong at tech but having enough breath were able to become leads and lead teams successfully.
As a Tech lead, I thought, need to know answers to all the problems and be aware of solution to every challenge team puts in front of you. but what I learn’t is one doesn’t need to know all the answers but should be able to guide the team in direction of finding the right answers.
Every one in team plays important role and should value opinions of developer,
In the team, every developer has strengths and weakness. Tech lead should be open to take opinions of developers and promote the culture of positive tech discussions happening, that lead to right solutions. The talk by Nickolas Means helped me to learn this.
these are some of the key learnings that helped me to onboard with some level confidence and worked well for me. Hope this helps you. see you in next page of my Tech lead diaries.
