The Ideal Technical Lead

Who wants to be a technical lead

Becoming a technical lead is a great way to combine passion for technology with management skills, and it is important to understand what it entails. For experienced software developers who exhibit leadership skills and stay up to date on the latest technology, it may be beneficial to consider pursuing a technical lead position.

A technical lead needs to have a deep understanding of technology and software development practices, and should be personable and capable enough to effectively lead a team and collaborate with others ¹. Ideally you will spend more time on technical topics such as guiding architecture decisions, spotting technically risky implementations, or negotiating with security and other technical teams to agree on interfaces and processes. Many tech leads often prioritise the technical work (e.g. choosing frameworks, libraries and design or architecture choices) over people or team responsibilities to their team’s detriment.

A technical lead is a professional who oversees software development or software engineering teams who must code for an ideal minimum time of about 30%.

In 2021 Red Hat surveyed 1,341 IT decision makers and most respondents have plans for digital transformation in the coming year, with 67% in the transforming, accelerating, or leading stages. More organizations are recognizing that people are just as important to digital transformation as the technology itself. People and process skills together with technical skills will have increased in importance as top non-IT funding priorities for 2022. You can read more about global tech outlook ².

History of Software Engineering.

The introduction of personal computing changed software engineering. Old ways of working don’t lend themselves to innovative outcomes but individuals often attach their identity to their tasks which creates friction and slows progress. Recognizing patterns of predictable conflicts, how can organizations reduce resistance, accelerate technology adoption and improve the probability of success?

“Architecture represents the significant design decisions that shape a system, where significance is measured by cost of change”. - Grady Booch

Grady gives a tour of how we have developed software-intensive systems, from the time when computers were human, to now, where we are crafting computers that act like humans. Along the way he highlights the stories of the people who made this work manifest ³.

No matter what future we may envision, it relies on software that has not yet been written. The entire history of software engineering can be seen as one of raising levels of abstraction. And yet, in each phase of this journey, there have been particular technical, social, and economic forces that have shaped each style, and even now act upon our field to shape its future.

High profit margins attract competition like bees to honey. Smaller startups will attempt to break into the market to get a slice of the pie. Capitalism is brutal and competition will erode a company’s margins as it slows down revenue growth and reduces pricing power.

Why, all of a sudden, are so many successful business leaders urging their companies and colleagues to make more mistakes and embrace more failures? If you’re not prepared to fail, you’re not prepared to learn. Too many leaders live in fear of mistakes, missteps, and disappointments. But if you’re not prepared to fail, you’re not prepared to learn ⁴.

Engineering Intelligence

Software development is now about connecting disparate pieces of established software and open-source code and figuring out how to integrate with a company’s proprietary code for the best results.

Engineering intelligence is a technology-driven process for analyzing data and presenting actionable information to help developers and IT leaders to make better-informed engineering decisions. Engineering intelligence provides the necessary information to enable business intelligence. Leaders can look at those dashboards that support data-driven decision making at a technical, product and business level. Better engineering intelligence equals better business intelligence ⁵.

“The goal is to transform data into information and information into insight." — Carly Fiorina (“Information: The Currency of the Digital Age”) ⁶.

A common transition of a developer to a technical leader means more visbility, participate in hiring panels and industry events. Succesful technical leaders can ensure everyone remains productive and projects are delivered on time. With more experience, they can anticipate risk earlier, communicate clearer. You can visualize and analyze software delivery pipeline to remove waste, automate interactions, reduce bottlenecks and maximize effectiveness. analyze and optimize their delivery process. This experience allows them to lead a larger team more effectively. A seasoned leader who has been working across many teams in many different organisations; They have built leadership skills to deal with various people and team situations ⁷.

It’s fine to try a tech lead role and revert back to your initial role. It will only make you a better developer.

Multitasking - employers want a technical lead who can manage many projects at once while still meeting deadlines and presenting innovative products. Tech leads should focus on improving your decision-making and organizational abilities to help you effectively manage your workload.

Tech talent most in demand as Singapore hiring picks up in 2022 ⁸. The Robert Walters survey, which covered 608 respondents from six South-east Asian countries, found that slightly over half of respondents in Singapore intend to change jobs in the next six months. Career progression was the top reason, cited by over two-thirds of these respondents, followed by salary increases, cited by 59 per cent.

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