Starting as a new technical lead - Shaping a Team
Congratulations! Someone has made the wise decision to hire you as the new technical lead. It is an exciting time. You start in a new environment, will be working with a new team and maybe even have to learn new technologies along the way. This can be quite challenging. In the first article I wrote about introducing change. In this second article I want to share my personal views on shaping great teams. As team lead, there are certain values that are just part of me and they way I think about leadership. Fortunately, in JDriven I found a company that matches my values step by step. These values are #commit, #develop and #share. In this article I want to go into some of the values that I consider important to create a great team.
I consider sharing knowledge one of the most important values. Teams consist of people with different experience levels and backgrounds. It should be everyone’s goal to help each other grow and develop. You can share knowledge in many ways. Some examples are pair programming, help troubleshooting/debugging, collaborate on a design or technical sessions or writing articles. By doing this we grow as a team. Where one gains technical skills the other gains leadership skills or new insights. Also don’t forget that even experienced architects can learn about new technologies from new programmers. Asking for help from others also shows that you’re not some all knowing dictator and one man team. Working on complex projects is a team effort that benefits from actively helping each other.
