Inspiration, quality, and responsibility look like a very strong triad when measuring success as a tech leader. Not all teams are created equal, not all of them have all roles covered. Furthermore, “you can have teams with no leaders and teams with more than one leader”.

• A bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or any IT-related field would be a minimum.
• When to accept good enough and when to push for better is ultimately a judgment call.
• If upgrades are necessary, the team should comply and take time to implement them.
• Successful tech leads know how to recognize talented developers and point them in the right direction.

The nuance here is that the first scenario has a high amount of churn, expected changes over time, and complexity; the second scenario does not. Challenge your team members technical lead developer in a way that encourages them to grow. The whole point of having a team is to share the load and to accomplish more together than any one individual could do on their own.

Coach and mentor other software developers

“Inspiring team members to grow”, and “writing high-quality code” are the first two answers from both the experts and the audience. The meetup’s audience also gave several other suggestions a positive response, but our experts have very clear advice to offer. Improving software quality could mean taking a look at leading indicators, such as PR size, refactor ratio, and rework ratio, which can impact your software delivery pipeline.

Only after all that is done do I start on my own work for the day. I’ll check Slack or do code reviews throughout the rest of the day as well, but only at natural stopping points so as not to interrupt my flow. Due to a phenomenon called “attention residue,” it takes around 20 minutes to get fully focused on the task at hand.

Technical leadership skills

Don’t forget that leadership is about people, so genuinely help people grow and do their best job will make you the best leader you can be. After proving your skill in a field, Look for chances to build managerial skills. Bear in mind that you don’t need a manager title to gain this experience. By taking on side projects, mentoring junior developers, and tracking performance, you gain management experience. This process will also expose you to new technical skills and give you leadership models to consider. Tech leads are a common role for engineers looking to build their technical and managerial skill sets.

In short, being a tech lead is an exercise in influencing without direct authority. Since code is easier to measure than your new responsibilities, it’s easy to get down on yourself about what feels like a decrease in productivity. The problem is that when you do sit down to code, you’ll get interrupted a lot more often.

To do so, however, they must rely on more than their technical expertise. It probably won’t happen overnight, and several years down the road you might reflect back on your early days as a business leader and wonder how you made it to where you are now. You are human, and the beauty of making a mistake is learning from it, and not making the same mistake again. Mistakes are simply one more lesson that’ll make tech leadership come more naturally down the line.

By using advanced analytics to create and democratize insights throughout the enterprise, a technology team’s data leaders can emerge as an asset to the business. The same can be true for leaders in cybersecurity and data privacy. These are increasingly high-profile and even brand-defining issues for many organizations, and technology leaders could use these portfolios to help build influence in the coming decades. In fact, 70% of respondents said cybersecurity was the digital transformation initiative they're currently pursuing or planning to pursue in the next two years. Since our 2020 study, technology has continued to reinvent how businesses operate. This, along with the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic, has contributed to the dispersion and expansion of technology leadership roles.

A small technical decision made by a developer might have a wider architectural impact, but is impossible to prevent if developers do not understand the broader picture. The role is called "Tech Lead" for a reason, and it is essential that you find some time to spend in the codebase. Being involved in the code helps you build respect with the rest of the team, but it also helps keep your knowledge up to date and current with constraints, problems and the "shape" of the current codebase. Tech leads embody a unique blend of technical expertise and people skills. Tim is a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP and serves as the US leader for Monitor Deloitte’s Technology Strategy & Business Transformation practice.

New opportunities for harnessing and monetizing data have emerged, and tech is seen not only as a strategy enabler, but a strategy cocreator. Tech leaders should lead a synchronized team with multiple talents and competencies, all working toward the transformation of the enterprise. Deloitte’s 2023 Global Technology Leadership Study shows how savvy tech leaders are not only rising to this challenge but also charting new career paths for themselves and the people on their teams. If you’re head of engineering and want to measure how your tech leads manage code quality and tech debt, use LinearB to track review depth, rework ratio, and change failure rate metrics.