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A Tech Lead’s New Project Checklist

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Re: A Tech Lead’s New Project Checklist

#21

Post by jaggederest »

defen wrote: post #13
JackC wrote: post #8

"Understand the importance of the Trinity of delivery: Delivery manager, product owner, tech lead" I'm only familiar with teams too small to have separate roles like this. How does good software planning scale down to smaller teams -- say 5 or 10 people in the whole organization? Ultimately someone has to be responsible for the same concerns, but I wonder how it maps. In general I'd love to see a comparison of softwa…

"Delivery manager" is basically how people say "project manager" now. Their job is to set priorities, triage incoming issues, make sure everyone knows what everyone else is doing (when relevant); coordinate with third parties or external integrations, etc. Product owner is who you're building the product for - in client services it would be your client; for internal projects it would be who is "driving" (more bizspea…

"Project Manager" has negative stigma. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think the perception has to do with the way that project management might be done in larger organizations - concern for minutia and TPS reports over actual accomplishments.

Re: A Tech Lead’s New Project Checklist

#22

Post by jaggederest »

JackC wrote: post #8

"Understand the importance of the Trinity of delivery: Delivery manager, product owner, tech lead" I'm only familiar with teams too small to have separate roles like this. How does good software planning scale down to smaller teams -- say 5 or 10 people in the whole organization? Ultimately someone has to be responsible for the same concerns, but I wonder how it maps. In general I'd love to see a comparison of softwa…

The minimum team size is one: A single person building a project.

I'd guess the minimum successful team size is in the 2-3 range. At the very least you must have a client or customer of some kind and a developer or implementer.

Re: A Tech Lead’s New Project Checklist

#23

Post by lstamour »

maxxxxx wrote: post #6
Domenic_S wrote: post #2

What’s the budget and the value proposition? should be #1. Projects without a clear purpose (happens way more than you might think) are sinking ships you've got to get away from.

I would add "Make sure every stakeholder has the same idea what the project will be". I have seen a lot of projects where once you talk to all stakeholders it becomes pretty clear that there is no shared understanding of what we are trying to achieve. Especially be wary of senior managers injecting their pet ideas.

See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fz-AowdiL8 - a 1 hr webinar from the folks behind Microsoft Press' recent Software Requirements books (Seilevel) on how to document these requirements and make sure folks are on the same page.

Re: A Tech Lead’s New Project Checklist

#24

Post by ilaksh »

ryandrake wrote: post #20
JackC wrote: post #8

"Understand the importance of the Trinity of delivery: Delivery manager, product owner, tech lead" I'm only familiar with teams too small to have separate roles like this. How does good software planning scale down to smaller teams -- say 5 or 10 people in the whole organization? Ultimately someone has to be responsible for the same concerns, but I wonder how it maps. In general I'd love to see a comparison of softwa…

They forgot QA lead. I know it's currently posh in some companies to do away with QA (YOLO software development methodology?). I've found successful software delivery without a strong QA lead on equal footing as the tech lead and PM/PJM is a recipe for disaster. QA is often the only source of truth that you can rely on when you want an accurate assessment of where things stand.

The thing is that tests generally have to be a core part of the development process now, so if the QA isn't being driven by the devs then they aren't doing software engineering quite up to contemporary standards.

Having said that, I have had a lot of jobs on small teams, especially some years ago, where testing was inadequate or not really part of the development process, and I always tried to convince them to hire one good QA person. They never listened. Instead on a few occasions a user or business analyst would be assigned to QA which I explained was a joke. But I guess I have just not had the best budgeted projects or something.

Re: A Tech Lead’s New Project Checklist

#25

Post by ncallaway »

throwme_1980 wrote: post #9

here is what i usually do: -identify weak people in the team with a stinky attitude, those who dont learn and are toxic, do your best to get rid of them. -next identify those mediocre people doing 9-5, maximise their output during those hours, don't give them no slack. -finally identify your super stars, cherish them, buy them coffee/lunch and give them a lot of slack. for this is a meritocracy, no damn Disneyland.

I operate with very different rules, but I'm really happy with the results so far. I would _never_ work on a team that you're leading, though.

I guess success looks different for everyone.

Re: A Tech Lead’s New Project Checklist

#26

Post by AndrewKemendo »

33W wrote: post #10
JackC wrote: post #8

"Understand the importance of the Trinity of delivery: Delivery manager, product owner, tech lead" I'm only familiar with teams too small to have separate roles like this. How does good software planning scale down to smaller teams -- say 5 or 10 people in the whole organization? Ultimately someone has to be responsible for the same concerns, but I wonder how it maps. In general I'd love to see a comparison of softwa…

I'm a lead on a team of 13 right now: myself, 6 developers, a QA lead, 2 testers, analyst, scrum master, and product owner. We're one of ~15? teams in my organization (part of an overall IT shop of ~3000), but we're fairly separate from the others in business and technologies. We have a delivery manager for our team and a couple other efforts. There's a dedicated tech lead of tech leads, program level PMs, lead produ…

>scrum master

Serious question, do you find real value out of this position?

Re: A Tech Lead’s New Project Checklist

#27

Post by alex_anglin »

jaggederest wrote: post #21
defen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Delivery manager" is basically how people say "project manager" now. Their job is to set priorities, triage incoming issues, make sure everyone knows what everyone else is doing (when relevant); coordinate with third parties or external integrations, etc. Product owner is who you're building the product for - in client services it would be your client; for internal projects it would be who is "driving" (more bizspea…

"Project Manager" has negative stigma. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think the perception has to do with the way that project management might be done in larger organizations - concern for minutia and TPS reports over actual accomplishments.

The Project Management Institute and their certification process has led to a situation where project management is seen as a domain-agnostic discipline. As a result, many certified project managers know little about the domains they are managing. Furthermore, coming from the construction industry, many of the traditional project management processes and thought is linear and waterfall in nature. They have taken steps to adopt agile and iterative processes in the past few years, but bear great legacy costs when it comes to applying project management to technology projects (where many projects fail for a variety of reasons).

Re: A Tech Lead’s New Project Checklist

#28

Post by majormajor »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #26
33W wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a lead on a team of 13 right now: myself, 6 developers, a QA lead, 2 testers, analyst, scrum master, and product owner. We're one of ~15? teams in my organization (part of an overall IT shop of ~3000), but we're fairly separate from the others in business and technologies. We have a delivery manager for our team and a couple other efforts. There's a dedicated tech lead of tech leads, program level PMs, lead produ…

>scrum master Serious question, do you find real value out of this position?

There are many industries which have found value in specific people to do the paperwork and deal with process. I don't think it's needed under 10 or so people if you have a good team, but once you're we'll into the 20+ range, I don't understand why so many devs are so set against giving this type of work to someone else.

It's certainly not what I want to to be doing day-to-day, yet our tools aren't smart enough today for me to do well in a larger org without it.

Re: A Tech Lead’s New Project Checklist

#30

Post by dasil003 »

ilaksh wrote: post #24
ryandrake wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They forgot QA lead. I know it's currently posh in some companies to do away with QA (YOLO software development methodology?). I've found successful software delivery without a strong QA lead on equal footing as the tech lead and PM/PJM is a recipe for disaster. QA is often the only source of truth that you can rely on when you want an accurate assessment of where things stand.

The thing is that tests generally have to be a core part of the development process now, so if the QA isn't being driven by the devs then they aren't doing software engineering quite up to contemporary standards. Having said that, I have had a lot of jobs on small teams, especially some years ago, where testing was inadequate or not really part of the development process, and I always tried to convince them to hire o…

I don't think testing and QA hit the same sweet spot. Trying to automate acceptance tests often gets into brittle territory, doubly so on mobile apps. Obviously it depends a lot on the nature of the product, but in a lot of cases human QA (perhaps with QA engineers building some partial automation) leads to a higher quality product at a lower cost than trying to get fully automated test coverage for everything.
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