10 tips to become an awesome Technical Lead v2 (Devoxx PL)

@DaggieBe#DevoxxPL

Platinum Sponsor:

10 tips to become an awesome Technical Lead

Bart Blommaerts

Ordina

ORD

INA

J

WO

RKS

Bart BlommaertsApplication Architect Ordina Belgium

@DaggieBe

JWorks

Technical Leadership

What?

Technical Leadership

What?

Technical Guidance

Technical Leadership

What?

Risks & Requirements Technical Guidance

Technical Leadership

What?

Coaching Risks & Requirements Technical Guidance

Technical Leadership

What?

Communication Coaching Risks & Requirements Technical Guidance

Technical Leadership

Do we really need one?

Technical Leadership

Do we really need one?

Everything is awesome !

Technical Leadership

Do we really need one?

Really well-functioning teams

where people share responsibilities

2 sides to a storyTechnical responsibilities vs. Leadership activities

Technical Leadership

50 %

MIZA Business Company

Technical

MIZA Business Company

1. Advocate for Change

ORIENT

ACT

OBSERVE

DECIDE

Advocate for Change

Experience the same pain as

everybody else on the team

@DaggieBe#DevoxxPL

Platinum Sponsor:

11 tips to become an awesome Technical Lead

Bart Blommaerts

Ordina

MIZA Business Company

2. Work through Failure and Success

Things will fail

Prepare for failure

Don’t finger-point

Take responsibility

Learn from failure

www.websitename.com 20

Celebrate success

Sprint celebrations

Feature complete

Congratulate the team

Congratulate individuals

MIZA Business Company

3. Stay Technical

Stay Technical

Write code

Review code

Technical vision

Evolution of code

NetworkingSecurity

Deployment

Consistency

Stay Technical

MIZA Business Company

4. Always Available

Technical Design Business Project

Management

Code

Time Management

35% 25% 15% 25%

Be realistic

MIZA Business Company

5. Be a mentor for your team

Mentor

Mediator

Mentor

Mediator

Mentor Match goals

Optimise for

the group

Effective

delegation

Mediator

Mentor Match goals

Optimise for

the group

Effective

delegation

Mediator

Mentor Match goals

Optimise for

the group

Effective

delegation

Mediator

Know when to give input

Know when to make decisions

Know when to step back

MIZA Business Company

6. Surround yourself with other Tech Leads

Personal Level

Objectives Architecture

Interoperability

Dependencies

Organisational level

You are not alone

MIZA Business Company

Leadership

MIZA Business Company

7. Interviewing potential new team members

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b56eAUCTLok

www.websitename.com 41

Know your goal

Prepare

Usefulness of resumes

Don’t focus on tooling

Mindset of a Developer

Eagerness to learn

Do not use stackoverflow to find questions

1. Comfort

2. Offer options

3. Build on responses

4. Show interest

5. Bonus question

MIZA Business Company

8. Embrace Cultural differences

Embrace Cultural Differences

Diversity is invaluable

Opinions matter

Shared end goal

Surround yourself

Time

Communication

Prepare work

Everybody is part of the teamOffshore?

MIZA Business Company

9. Estimating is hard

Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes

longer than you expect, even when you

take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

Douglas Hofstadter

Quickly repurpose top innovation

before global communities.

Planning poker

Define a sequence

Set a baseline

Allow reasoning

Uncertainty is normal

(O + 4BG + P) ÷ 6

Unknown unknowns

Add 20% for - test - debug - polish - documentation - wtf moments

Solutioning

Any estimate is better than no estimate

Don’t forget the bigger pictureShare estimates

Review estimates

MIZA Business Company

10. Interfacing with the outside world

MIZA Business Company

Communication with

non-technical people

Go-to-Guy / Go-to-Girlfor management, the customer and other stakeholders

No

MIZA Business Company

11. Facilitate (agile) team work

Facilitate agileBacklog

Prioritised backlog

Sprint Planning

Burn down charts

Retrospectives

…

Facilitate an awesome team

MIZA Business Company

Thank You@DaggieBe