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36 steps to success as technical lead

zz http://littletutorials.com/2008/07/07/success-as-technical-lead/ 
分为3个部分
Set yourself up for success
Build your relationship with the team
Build your relationship with the management and business people

Set yourself up for success

1. Define early on what success means for you, the team and the business

You have to have a clear idea of what you want. You also have to understand what team members and the management want. You also have to be aware that what people really want, what they say the want and sometimes even what they think they want are very different things. Try to be very honest at least with yourself. Success has different definitions for different people. If there is a big disconnect between these definitions you have a problem before you start.

2. Believe in the project: idea, architecture, time, team

You cannot have any kind of success if you are convinced you lead a team of morons to implement a stupid idea using the wrong architecture in a ridiculously short time. You have to really believe in the project to have a chance to success. This does not mean lie to yourself. It means do whatever you can to understand your concerns and work on them with the management. As for the architecture, it is best if you have a heavy word or if you are the architect.

3. Understand the domain, the business requirements and the technical challenges

You should be an expert in the technologies used for implementation. You also have to become very knowledgeable in the problem domain and the business case. This will help you understand the business decisions dropped on your head from upstairs and also will help you stand a chance at negotiating them.

4. Know your team: strengths, weaknesses, ambitions and personalities

Software is created by people. Your job as a “tech lead” is to support them in doing that, both from a technical point of view and at a human level. You want to lead a team of motivated and enthusiastic people. But each person gets motivated by different things.

5. Have a plan as a result of a planning activity

“Plans are useless but planning is essential” - (Dwight D Eisenhower, US President, general 1890-1969). Planning will make you think about the problems you face in detail. Also keep in mind that “a plan is just a list of things that ain’t gonna happen” - (Benicio Del Torro in “The Way of the Gun”).

6. Be part in the design of everything

This does not mean do the whole design. You want to empower team members. But your job is to understand and influence each significant subsystem in order to maintain architectural integrity.

7. Get your hands dirty and code

Yes you should take parts of the code and implement them. Even the least glamorous parts. This will help you not getting stuck alone between management and the team. It will also help you gain respect in the team.

8. Act as a communication proxy for your team

In long complex projects with big teams communication is one of the most complicated aspects. The more people you have involved in solving a problem the bigger the communication matrix becomes. Since people need information to be able to make the right decisions this will lead to an exponential increase in the time consumed for communication. Agile methodologies alleviate this problem. But in the end it is up to you to propagate important information to the right people.

9. Make sure everybody understands the big picture: their work has implications

This will help you greatly because will allow team members to design and implement in a way that you don’t have to fight. It is also hard work from your part.

10. Fight for architecture and design consistency

Doing the right thing from the design and architecture point of view is not more costly. It is actually cheaper in every project longer than a couple of months. Every early investment in architecture pays for itself later during integration and maintenance. Even if you have to admit an occasional hack or prototype in the code base you should contain it in very specific modules.

11. Know the status of everybody’s work and detect slippage

This allows for corrective actions and for early communication with the management. You don’t want to be caught by surprise. Remember that during 90% of the allocated time for a task the code is 90% complete.

12. Record technical debt if you need shortcuts but try to maintain architectural integrity; report the debt

This one is very important for products that will have multiple releases. Technical debt should be analyzed at the beginning of each iteration.

13. Use the process that makes sense in your particular case

Tough one. Sometimes (most of the times?) the process is not up to you. In the enterprise usually the process is pre-decided. But always keep in mind that the process in itself means nothing. It is the people who give meaning to the process. Good people can make the worst process work while the wrong team cannot make any process work. Waterfall can be implemented in a very agile way and the agile methodologies can be applied with “rigor mortis” agility (see The Agile 800 Pounds Gorilla).

14. Avoid dogmas - question why everything is done the way is done; make sure everybody else knows the reasons

Sometimes I hear from programmers: we are agile and combine XP and Scrum and we also do TDD (Test Driven Development - I still hope for a TDD that means Thought Driven Development). The questions that pop up in my mind are: Do you need all those? Do you “really” do them by the book?
Anyway the point here is don’t do anything just because it is the way it has always been done. Understand why. Then explain the reasons to all team members. Rinse and repeat.

15. Avoid design by committee; listen to everybody but make your own decisions

No good design is born from referendum. There are lots of people making wild exotic suggestions when their a$$ is not on the line. There are also excessively prudent ideas born from fear. Even with good ideas you have to filter them and make them yours before you can include them in the design. A good architecture and a good design is usually born in one mind, an open mind that looks around. The obvious example is Linux.


Build your relationship with the team

16. Gain the team’s respect with the quality of your work and by doing what you are preaching17. Be fair
18. Admit your mistakes
19. Publicly recognize both team’s and individual members’ merits
20. Don’t blame anybody publicly for anything
21. Build morale and confidence by offering early victories to the team and to its individual members
22. Match people and tasks based on skills and their personal preference if possible; explain your decisions
23. Work the estimates with the team don’t come up with them
24. Mentor people
25. Listen to and learn from people
26. Explain your technical decisions

Build your relationship with the management and business people
27. Be sure you have authority along with responsibility
28. Be sure you get requirements and not architecture/design masked as requirements
29. Explain technical decisions in business terms
30. Try to be accurate in your estimates; avoid being too optimistic and don’t push it with hidden padding; explain the need for padding
31. Set reasonable expectations
32. Understand the relationships and dependencies with other teams or projects
33. Accurately report the status with alarms, explanations and solutions; report any technical debt
34. Resist pressure for change in requirements, and more important for shortcuts…
35. Be aware of politics
36. React to surprises with calm and with documented answers

posted on 2008-10-29 21:45 泡泡牛 阅读(1022) 评论(0)  编辑 收藏 引用


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