Comments on: What It Takes To Be A Great Technical Lead

By: Time != Productivity - Matthew Botos

Time != Productivity - Matthew Botos — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:53:19 +0000

[...] What It Takes To Be A Great Technical Lead reminded me to write this long-brewing post; for a long time I’ve seen a false notion in corporate America that the hours you’re physically present at the office reflects your productivity and value. What should be measured is efficiency: productivity divided by time, where value comes from doing more in fewer hours. [...]

By: Davy Brion

Davy Brion — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 06:41:06 +0000

@Steve

couldn’t agree more

By: Steve Py

Steve Py — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:29:05 +0000

“First one in, last one to leave.” That’s a good philosophy for a project manager.

Oh, and one thing that’s VERY important. (I missed thinking of this earlier.) A good lead developer HAS to be approachable! This means good communication skills with the rest of the team, and also doesn’t bog themselves down with work to the point that if anyone has any issue or problem they feel like they’re “bugging” the lead.

By: Sean’s Blog » Blog Archive » What It Takes To Be A Great Technical Lead

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:00:05 +0000

[...] Brion over on Elegant Code has a great post on what it takes to be a technical lead. I think he’s on the right track and this is the beginning of a good set of criteria. Now the [...]

By: Davy Brion

Davy Brion — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:20:12 +0000

@Matthew

“A lot of your points read like an agile scrum manifesto; is that by design or experience?”

a mix of both

By: Matthew Botos

Matthew Botos — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:32:14 +0000

Good post; technical leadership career paths should be discussed more.

A lot of your points read like an agile scrum manifesto; is that by design or experience? The collaborative team notion almost goes against having a designated leader, though am unofficial one often emerges.

Two dissenting points:
1. If the team succeeds as a whole, it also fails as a whole.
2. Hours != Productivity!! This is an outmoded industrial age concept that has no relevance in the information age.

By: Davy Brion

Davy Brion — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:17:03 +0000

well that “being the last one to leave” thing only applies IMO to the technical lead, not the rest of the team

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:15:22 +0000

Very good post indeed, but I have a strange feeling on the overtime topic.
On one side I am a strongly believer in no-overtime (and have been beaten by my beliefs :-p), but the “being the last one to leave the room” attitude can lead to all sorts of stupid competitions amongst coworkers or, even worse, people slacking off (or not being as productive as they can be) during normal work hours just to BE PART of the late pizza party.
And this hurts everyone

Corolary: do better than your best to align co-workers against overtime. After all, “God kills a kitten every time an engineer puts on overtime”

By: Jan Van Ryswyck

Jan Van Ryswyck — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 06:48:26 +0000

Scott Bellware had this magnificent post where he calls an agile architect a “PathFinder”. Alas, this was on his old blog so I can’t put out a link to it. Anyway, I personally like to live up to the term “PathFinder”.

By: Scott Schimanski

Scott Schimanski — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 05:00:42 +0000

Davy: Great post. I would enjoy hearing more about your experiences with self-organizing teams.