This only outlines how a Tech Lead should operate, promoting consensus and not being authoritarian. Decision making by a committee is a recipe for failure.
We don't need a Tech Lead
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Re: We don't need a Tech Lead
#22I don't know that I fully agree with this. I think in even well functioning teams you need at least one person who is empowered to make the call. In the cases of a disagreement deadlock you need someone to break the deadlock. Whether that person is a called a Tech Lead or something else you still need them and they need authority and freedom to make the call. Maybe his Mediator can be that person but if you give the…
A well functioning team makes all decisions by consensus, so there are no deadlocks. There are certainly disagreements, but they are hashed out in a timely fashion in well functioning teams. That doesn't mean necessarily that everybody completely agrees with everything, but it does mean that members recognize when to defer rather than stall. If you have deadlocks, it's not a well functioning team.
Great. But we live in reality where lots of teams are not well functioning some or all of the time, and we still need to get things done even when we don't have the time, resources or influence to fix the team composition then and there.
EDIT: I'd also argue that in most well functioning team few decisions needs to be taken by the team, because the team members know their role well enough and trusts the others to do the same that everyone is empowered to take decisions. Unfortunately again, we live in the real world where decision making is often needed exactly because a lot of the time there are team members we can't let run rampant and make their own decisions. Or have too much influence.
Re: We don't need a Tech Lead
#23While this sounds good in theory (and I've been in teams that were very self-organizing and operated well without a formal tech lead), I feel that it omits some key aspects of real life. Let's look at the list towards the end, for example:
- When there are newcomers, we need a strong coach.
- When there are architectural challenges, we need an experienced architect.
- When there are internal conflicts, we need a mediator.
- When there are external blockers or lack of resources, we need a concierge.
- When we need to negotiate and integrate with other teams, we need a ambassador.
Ok, so the author marked those under "leadership". My experience with other developers is that there is a surprisingly large dev population who would absolutely abhorred if they had to touch any of those things (maybe apart from the architecture part). And in my experience, the effect doesn't grow smaller, and might even become more profound, with prolific devs who have tens of years of experience; they want to code because coding is what they love (this of course applies to more junior devs too).
So the point is not to elevate one individual to some golden standard know-and-do-it-all aka Tech Lead. The whole point, which the article actually does touch, is to have different roles between team members, so that ideally everyone can focus on the things they are passionate about. If more than one people feel that they want to take responsibility with the things mentioned in the above list, fine, the team can have many "tech leads".
Just make sure that if you omit the whole role that people are not burdened with responsibilities they are going to hate. Because that is something that can destroy even a good team pretty well.
Re: We don't need a Tech Lead
#24I don't know that I fully agree with this. I think in even well functioning teams you need at least one person who is empowered to make the call. In the cases of a disagreement deadlock you need someone to break the deadlock. Whether that person is a called a Tech Lead or something else you still need them and they need authority and freedom to make the call. Maybe his Mediator can be that person but if you give the…
One doesn't become a leader by just being called the lead. Some people have personal traits that make them assume a leader role more often then others. In my experience, a team that is constantly looking for one person to call all the shots isn't very much empowered. If everyone can take responsibility to own up for the calls to make, you end up with a far more engaged team. It requires a certain maturity but a motiv…
"In the cases of a disagreement deadlock you need someone to break the deadlock." != "a team that is constantly looking for one person to call all the shots".
Re: We don't need a Tech Lead
#25I would say a great reason to have a tech leader is to share the role of PM between the BA and the tech lead. This role can be rotated as far as I'm concerned. A lot of companies I see have far too many PMs overseeing too few projects.
Re: We don't need a Tech Lead
#26Every team has a tech lead (or a most senior dev, or architect, or whatever) whether they formally assign one or not. Titles are nonense but so is the idea that roles don't exist.
Regardless of the title (or lack of title) of the person, there will always be a person or a small subset of people that make technical judgements, communictate with management and so on.
I completely agree with the article that coaching, architecture etc. are different tasks and should ideally be different people. The reality though seem to be that it's usually just many hats for one or very few people .
Re: We don't need a Tech Lead
#27The conclusion doesn't agree with the title.
FTA:
> So, do we really need a tech lead? - Maybe yes when the conditions are not ideal.
Re: We don't need a Tech Lead
#28In the teams without a tech lead that I have seen, people just defer to the most senior/confident developer in the team to resolve deadlocks and decide between some tougher choices. That person essentially becomes a tech lead without a title. Edit: I agree with the child comments. It makes things easier, less prone to miscommunication, and efficient to have an actual tech lead in the team.
Senior does not automatically imply confident. I'm most senior in my team but in certain areas I have to admit I'm not confident enough to make a sane choice. If a junior developer that is confident in a solution can't be able to lead in that decision, the team is dysfunctional as stated in the article.
It's not about a junior person leading in the decision, it is about deciding between competing solutions. As the senior person you should see the bigger picture beyond the current problem solution even if it's an area your unfamiliar with. The people proposing the solution need to convince you that their solution is the one to go with.
A good lead will listen to all sides, and explain how a decision is being made. The goal is that whatever decision occurs that everyone is okay with it, even if they disagree. This is where people skills (and engineering skills like cost, consistency, time) are just as important as technical skills.
Re: We don't need a Tech Lead
#29While this sounds good in theory (and I've been in teams that were very self-organizing and operated well without a formal tech lead), I feel that it omits some key aspects of real life. Let's look at the list towards the end, for example: - When there are newcomers, we need a strong coach. - When there are architectural challenges, we need an experienced architect. - When there are internal conflicts, we need a medi…
Exactly. In most small companies, the above roles often is the tech lead role. In larger companies, it's quite common to find it broken up - separate architects, different levels of engineers where the higher levels are expected to help guide newcomers or juniors; people to interface with other teams etc. If they then have "tech leads" it usually tend to mean someone who plays some of the above roles within a larger team that may have separate people for some of the functions at a higher level.
And you're right - a lot of people don't want the above responsibilities. I've had teams where despite our best intentions in hiring from within when possible, all the engineers wanted to remain in pure engineering roles, so we had to go out and hire people to fill those roles as the team grew and I couldn't take on all of them myself any more.
Re: We don't need a Tech Lead
#30Can anyone imagine building a house where the window and the door crafts-men would use different materials, techniques and tools in each of the different rooms? Or where they would gather in a scrum and discuss this until they have reached consensus?
In no other profession would anyone embark on a large scale project without proper technical coordination. And this technical coordination is backed up by codes - the kind of codes that are legally enforceable.
Somehow software and the people working in there is different. There is a lot of confusion about the responsibility of the individual and team across the development process as evidenced by the spectrum of team orgs and workflows. I suspect one driver is the large power any developers yields on the outcome with the lack of sufficiently tangible and immediate feedback. This naturally leads to a less than objective self assessment of all players. Another is the desire and often accepted excuse that it is a creative process. There are significant professional incentives for doing something new where other approaches may have been more effective.