Federico Cargnelutti

Last updated: September 21, 2008 11:23 pm

36 steps to success as technical lead

1. Define early on what success means for you, the team and the business.
2. Believe in the project: idea, architecture, time, team.
3. Understand the domain, the business requirements and the technical challenges.
4. Know your team: strengths, weaknesses, ambitions and personalities.
5. Have a plan as a result of a planning activity.
6. Be part in the design of everything.
7. Get your hands dirty and code.
8. Act as a communication proxy for your team.
9. Make sure everybody understands the big picture: their work has implications.
10. Fight for architecture and design consistency.

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How not to lead geeks

1. Downplay training.
2. Give no recognition.
3. Plan too much overtime.
4. Use management-speak.
5. Try to be smarter than the geeks.
6. Act inconsistently.
7. Ignore the geeks.
8. Make decisions without consulting them.
9. Don’t give them tools.
10. Forget that geeks are creative workers.

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Nine things developers want more than money

1. Being set up to succeed.
2. Having excellent management.
3. Learning new things.
4. Exercising creativity and solving the right kind of problems.
5. Having a voice.
6. Being recognized for hard work.
7. Building something that matters.
8. Building software without an act of congress.
9. Having few legacy constraints.

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Top 10 ways to demotivate your programming team

1. Set up impossible deadlines.
2. Let them work overtime.
3. Don’t allow breaks.
4. Place a ban on laughing.
5. Break the coffee machine.
6. Don’t shield them from the dirty daily business.
7. Don’t challenge them.
8. Underpay them.
9. Bribe them.
10. Infiltrate a team member who is demotivated anyway.

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Don’t bring me solutions, bring me problems

(Don’t tell me how you want it to work, tell me what you want it to do)

1. Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
2. Suggesting solutions kills creativity.
3. Don’t bring me solutions, bring me problems.

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Classic mistakes enumerated

1. Undermined motivation.
2. Weak personnel.
3. Uncontrolled problem employees.
4. Heroics.
5. Adding people to a late project.
6. Noisy, crowded offices.
7. Friction between developers and customers.
8. Unrealistic expectations.
9. Lack of effective project sponsorship.
10. Lack of stakeholder buy-in.
11. Lack of user input.
12. Politics placed over substance.
13. Wishful thinking.

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