Making the Leap to Tech Lead
summary
Defines the tech lead as a partner with the project manager, measured by team success not individual commits, who builds a vision, creates seams in the system so juniors can work independently, and sets up feedback loops using CI and Heroku review apps and Code Climate. Gives a concrete win: a localization seam and library are built so three people ship in two weeks, with two developers shipping production for the first time, proving the approach works.
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chapters (23)
- 0:00Intro
- 1:39MAKING THE LEAP TO TECH LEAD Ryan Cromwell
- 3:59Disclaimer: Framed by Sparkbox, our business, the culture we've developed, and my own background.
- 5:28A tech is the right hand to the project manager.
- 6:44A tech lead is measured by the success of the team.
- 8:03A tech lead is regularly describing the technical vision.
- 10:31A tech lead is a model of "how we work together".
- 13:55A tech lead empowers and unlocks the team through communication, leadership, technical skill, and impact.
- 15:12Go-to expert in at least one area of the codebase.
- 16:43Perfect person to debug some of the most opaque issues.
- 17:22Finding and building seams in your architecture to enable the team to be productive and collaborate effectively.
- 20:05Advocating for and building a robust build and delivery pipeline using the tools at your disposal to create feedback loops.
- 21:34COMMUNICATION & LEADERSHIP
- 22:16Clearly and convincingly presenting ideas, vision, and architecture is a skill.
- 25:02MANAGING PROJECTS
- 25:41Give our customer/client, project manager, and team the ability to navigate to success.
- 28:29With budgets and reasonably achievable iterations in mind, you'll be expected to provide forecasts.
- 30:01MANAGING SELF
- 31:38It's essential that a tech lead deal effectively with pressure.
- 33:07Maintaining healthy relationships with users, clients, and team members.
- 35:00Makes others better through code reviews, thorough documentation, technical guidance, and mentoring.
- 35:55Opportunities to evolve the architecture and open seams for the rest of the team.
- 40:58GROWING
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